The Honeymooners

The Honeymooners is a 1950s situation comedy and one of the most-loved (and most-imitated) television comedies of all time. In the early 1950s, Jackie Gleason hosted a variety show, originally titled Cavalcade of Stars and airing on the DuMont Television Network. On the show (which moved to CBS in 1952 as The Jackie Gleason Show), Gleason enacted a number of recurring characters in comedic skits; the most popular of these involved featured Gleason as a Brooklyn bus driver named Ralph Kramden; Pert Kelton (and later Audrey Meadows) as his long-suffering wife, Alice; and Art Carney as Ralph's sewer-worker pal, Ed Norton. The skits became so popular that CBS offered Gleason an opportunity to produce and star in a half-hour sitcom with the characters, titled The Honeymooners. Meadows and Carney (along with Joyce Randolph as Norton's wife Trixie) followed Gleason to the new show, and the first episode aired on October 1, 1955. In all 39 episodes were created by the time the series ended in 1956. Gleason retained the rights to the reruns, which became extremely popular with an almost cult-like following. He later sold the series to CBS for a reported sum of $1 million.

Trivia

The Honeymooners was spoofed in a 2000 episode of the sitcom The King of Queens. It figures into a series of dreams that Doug Heffernan (Kevin James) has while he is sick. Doug is inserted into Ralph Kramden's role, and his wife Carrie (Leah Remini) steps in for Alice. Additionally, Ed Norton's role is filled by Deacon Palmer (Victor Williams). True to the original Honeymooners, the sequence was filmed in black-and-white. Kevin James is a big fan of Jackie Gleason.

Related Topics:
2000 - The King of Queens - Doug Heffernan - Kevin James - Carrie - Leah Remini - Deacon Palmer - Victor Williams

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The show was also parodied in a series of Warner Bros. animated cartoons, in which the principal characters are depicted as mice and Ralph's "big dream" is to get enough cheese to impress Alice with. These cartoons are The Honey-Mousers (1956), Cheese It, the Cat! (1957), and Mice Follies (1960). Human caricatures of Ralph and Ed are pitted against Bugs Bunny in the 1956 Warner cartoon Half-Fare Hare.

Related Topics:
Warner Bros. - Animated cartoons - Mice - 1956 - 1957 - 1960 - Bugs Bunny

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Comedian Eddie Murphy impersonated Ralph in an infamous stand-up routine depicting Kramden and Norton as gay lovers. The bit can be seen in Murphy's 1983 concert film Delirious.

Related Topics:
Eddie Murphy - Stand-up - Gay - 1983

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In 1994 the Dutch broadcasting network KRO produced a version of The Honeymooners entitled Toen was geluk heel gewoon, using translated scripts of the original series but changing its setting to 1950s Rotterdam. After the original scripts were all used up the series' lead actors, Gerard Cox and Sjoerd Pleijsier, took over writing, adding many new characters and references to Dutch history and popular culture. The series was a hit in Holland and continues to run.

Related Topics:
1994 - Dutch - Rotterdam

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The instrumental theme song for The Honeymooners, "You're My Greatest Love", was composed by Gleason and performed by an orchestra led by Ray Bloch (who had previously served as orchestra leader on Gleason's variety show, as well as The Ed Sullivan Show).

Related Topics:
Theme song - The Ed Sullivan Show

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