'The Honeymooners' color episodes to air again / Color Television history...

'The Honeymooners' color episodes to air again

The story says they haven't aired in over 30 years, but I swear I watched them on TV with my family in the late 70s. Could've been a special and my fading memories playing games with me.
These shoes weren't as good as the 50s originals, were they?

Dan C

http://www.msnbc.com/news/931615.asp?0dm=C14aL

LOS ANGELES, June 26 — Cue the lush strains of Jackie Gleason’s theme song “Melancholy Serenade.” Enter the June Taylor Dancers, festooned in feathers and sequins. From the fun and sun city Miami Beach, a version of Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners” not seen in more than 30 years is returning to television. As the Great One himself would no doubt say, “How sweet it is!”

STARTING SATURDAY, the fledgling cable channel GoodLife TV Network will broadcast the 42 “Honeymooners” episodes originally presented in color as part of “The Jackie Gleason Show” that aired during the 1960s on CBS.
Riding a wave of Baby Boomer nostalgia for old television shows, the 42 color shows are taking their place in TV afterlife beside two older black-and-white iterations of the landmark comedy — 39 episodes that ran as a stand-alone sitcom in the 1950s and a collection of 68 segments taken from Gleason’s old variety hour earlier that decade.
The color “Honeymooners,” which last aired as a set of reruns in 1971, star Gleason reprising his signature role as loudmouth bus driver Ralph Kramden and Art Carney returning as his bumbling but affable sidekick, sewer worker Ed Norton.

Newcomers Sheila MacRae and Jane Kean played their respective, long-suffering wives, Alice and Trixie, replacing Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph from the earlier cast.
As in previous versions of “The Honeymooners,” the show was set in the run-down New York City tenement inhabited by the Kramdens and often centered around the ill-fated get-rich-quick schemes forever hatched by the Gleason and Carney characters.

MUSIC AND DANCERS
Besides airing in color, the one-hour show was produced on a grander scale than the half-hour “Honeymooners” series, complete with original songs and dance numbers performed by the four principal players.

“Doing it the way we did, live, with the original music and dancers, it was like doing a Broadway show every week, once a week, so there was that much pressure,” Kean, 79, recalled in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Kean said Gleason, who died of cancer in 1987, was very much in charge of the show and known to be demanding, but she denied he was the insecure control freak suggested in a recent CBS made-for-TV movie about Gleason.
“I think they were a little too heavy on him. He did control the show. Everything had to be the way he wanted it. He was very good to the actors. We never had any complaints. He was a little tough on the writers,” she said.
Likewise, Marilyn Gleason, a member of the June Taylor Dancers who became the entertainer’s third wife in 1975, acknowledged, “There was a little bit of Ralph Kramden in Jackie, oh yeah .... He wasn’t a patient man, and he never counted to 10. He said what was on the top of his head.”

STICKING TO THE SCRIPT
Asked why ‘The Honeymooners’ has endured for so long, Marilyn Gleason quoted her husband’s famous terse explanation: ‘Because it was funny.’

One rule that Gleason rarely departed from was doing each show just once, without retakes. “He wouldn’t go back over it because he said the audience is not going to laugh twice at the same joke,” Kean said. And contrary to a widely held perception that much of the show was ad-libbed, Kean said the performers stuck very closely to the script.
“The Honeymooners” began in 1951 as a recurring comedy sketch within the Gleason-hosted “Cavalcade of the Stars,” which later became “The Jackie Gleason Show.”
In 1955-56, CBS aired 39 episodes of “The Honeymooners” as separate series, but the show failed to catch on and was pulled after a single season, though it lives on as a TV classic in syndication.
“When they went to the half hour and it was filmed, it took away the spontaneity,” Marilyn Gleason recounted.
Gleason returned with a lavish hour-long variety program in 1962, later moving his show from New York to Miami Beach. Carney rejoined the cast in 1966, and “The Honeymooners” was revived as hour-long segments filling over half the remaining “Jackie Gleason Show” telecasts during its final four years.
Asked why “The Honeymooners” has endured for so long, Marilyn Gleason quoted her husband’s famous terse explanation: “Because it was funny.”

 

It will be a complete pleasure to see these shows again.

Hope we get them in Canada.

 

What I'd really love to see are DVD releases of some of the complete "Jackie Gleason Show"/"Cavalcade of Stars" episodes.

 

Dan,
These are not nearly as good as the shows with Audrey Meadows so be prepared.

 

Re: 'The Honeymooners' color episodes to air again

I meant to say "shows" rather than "shoes", I really don't care if their shoes weren't as good as the old ones.
I won't get to see these anyway, don't have cable or satellite and I've never even heard of the "GoodLife" network.
I agree with guy though, the complete 50s shows on DVD would be excellent.

Dan C

 

I remember seeing them in the late 70s as well. I think it was on channel 5 from New York. No they're not as good as the Classic 39, but still enjoyable.

 

When you talk about the "RCA system" Steve, are you referring to shows that aired on NBC or was it not exclusive to their network?

 

As was the wonderful colors in "Lost In Space", Batman, etc.

 

So the reruns of "The Hollywood Squares" (the classic shows w/ Paul Lynde, Charlie Weaver, and Wally Cox) on the GameShow Network would show the qualities of this system, right? "I Dream Of Jeannie"? I'd imagine it was used for sports brdcsts. as well. IIRC NBC had the '69 Jets-Colts Superbowl and the '69 Mets-Orioles WS. Would "The Monkees" episodes be on the RCA or the CBS system? I know the show was on NBC, but I seem to remember something about Columbia owning the rights to the name/episodes. Maybe they just bought it off Kirshner.

 

"I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Monkees" were shot on color film with a single camera, basically "movie style" but on the cheap in comparison.
Supposedly neither CBS nor NBC saved tapes of the first Superbowl (is that amazing or what!).

So the GameShow Network is airing original "Hollywood Squares" shows? Did they find a vault full of lost tapes recently? I recall hearing that most or all of those episodes were erased years ago.

Dan C

 

As far as "The Hollywood Squares" Dan, I seem to recall that the tapes were "stumbled upon" in an NBC vault. I seem to remember hearing that on the "E! True Hollywood Story" for "THS".

What you say about the SBs seems right, but I did see a rebroadcast, might've been editted, for the Jets-Colts SB on ESPN Classic awhile ago.

 

I'm hoping they put out a Complete Honeymooners Original 39 Episodes DVD Boxset..as of now, the only way to get the Original "39" are through Columbia House! Quite costly! Anyone heard any info?

 

Thanks Steve! Now I know I wasn't dreaming it. I remember when we got our first color TV (1968-Magnavox, tube chassis) it always seemed to me that NBC had better (more saturated) color than CBS.

 

The picture I can well believe, but....the SOUND?!? From that little speaker? How'd they do it?


ED

 

Beautiful old set Steve! I agree about the intensity of the color, my folks '68 Magnavox set (all tubes) had really vivid color compared to the 1978 set they replaced it with (do you know who sourced the Magnavox picture tubes? I know they didn't make their own.) BTW, my stepbrother used the '68 for another 10 years before it gave up the ghost. I noticed that the set in your pic is an RCA, does the tube in it have the "correct" NTSC phosphors? I know RCA was the last manufacturer to go for the brighter but less accurate phosphors, but I don't know when they did that.