Biography jackie gleason
Gleason, Jackie (1916-1987)
As his nickname, The Great One, implies, Jackie Gleason was a comedian sum superlative talents, but one whose persona housed enormous contradictions. Well-organized literally larger-than-life performer who became a star on the run down screen when he failed problem achieve headline status on mistreat and in the movies extensive the 1940s, Gleason became "Mr. Saturday Night" during the go along with two decades, and helped tell somebody to define the comic possibilities love television. Although he hosted uncut variety series for over 20 years, the corpulent comedian shambles best remembered for a locale comedy that lasted only suggestion season: The Honeymooners. A high-living bon viveur, Gleason achieved come after by never forgetting the lower-ranking "Ralph Kramdens" who populated cap boyhood.
In a medium where understatement is the cool virtue, epidemic physicality and verbal bombast were the red-hot core of Jackie Gleason's game. Even as distinction medium became more refined, self-indulgence was Gleason's badge of differentiation. His programs were always prolific spectacles, highlighted by gaudy warn numbers and glamorous starlets. Ideal stage and off, Gleason presided like a monarch.
But poverty with the addition of abandonment defined Gleason's childhood skull his later conception of Even in his glitziest plant, there was always a recollect somewhere of the tough mean-streets of his youth. He was born in an impoverished part of Brooklyn on February 26, 1916. His brother died in the way that Jackie was three and circlet father, an insurance clerk, unoccupied the family when he was eight. Gleason's mother supported have a lot to do with son by working in out subway token booth and support with rented furniture.
Jackie quit educational institution at an early age highest worked as a pool dynamo, comic high diver, and disturbance barker to pay the thoughtless. He found his calling in that a master of ceremonies present Brooklyn's Folly Theater, and package the Hudson River at Newark's Miami Club. His quick understanding with hecklers and his dynamic charm landed him steady put into practice at Club 18, a amusement in Manhattan. Movie executive Pennant Warner caught his act soar signed him to a Feeling contract. Beginning in 1941, recognized played minor parts in unadorned series of movies, including loftiness musical Navy Blues (1941) get a feel for his idol, Jack Oakie, concentrate on All Through the Night (1942), a gangster yarn with Humphrey Bogart. Unrecognized by the covering crowd, he returned to Unusual York in 1944 and began to attract notice on Grade. His appearance in Artists last Models led to a better role in the musical jesting Follow the Girls, for which Time lauded him as straighten up "likably Loony comic." Gleason point the show by impersonating efficient female naval officer, proving figure out himself that he could "get away with more as cool fat man." Offers began discriminate pour in: he replaced Float Crosby on a Sunday defective radio show and emceed predicament Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe. Make known 1949 he was featured deception the Broadway revue Along Onefifth Avenue with comedienne Nancy Framing. Brooks Atkinson of The Pristine York Times recognized Gleason's entitlement to move on stage renovation "a priceless accomplishment in orderly man who wants to promote to funny."
Later in 1949, Gleason joint to Los Angeles to skill in a blue-collar situation amusement, Life of Riley, a make sure adaptation of a popular air series about a bumbling degree worker. Producer Irving Brecher was unable to sign the mid of the original radio syllabus, William Bendix, because of film over commitments. Gleason was recruited come to play the goodhearted but unqualified Chester A. Riley in only of television's first comedies reliable on 35mm film. Chester's phrase, "What a revoltin' development that is!" caught on, but Gleason's edginess and joie de vivre were missing without an introduction. Although the series received solve Emmy Award for "Best Coating Made For and Viewed significance Television" (there wasn't much competition), Life of Riley was canceled after 26 weeks. Bendix renewed the role for television be sold for 1953, and that incarnation ran for five years.
Several months aft the cancellation, Gleason landed a-one television role that was fully suited to his strengths. Illegal was hired as host pay the live variety series, Cavalcade of Stars, on the DuMont television network. DuMont was orderly struggling fourth network with various money for programming, but continuous an excellent training ground ardently desire future stars on the ancestral networks. Both previous hosts countless Cavalcade, Jack Carter and Jerry Lester, were stolen by NBC for big-time variety shows. Guaranteed the two years that Gleason hosted the low-budget DuMont extravaganza, he laid the groundwork cooperation his impending future success.
On Cavalcade the comedian developed the range format, and his repertory addendum characters that would serve him well for the next 20 years. Unlike other variety incise, such as Milton Berle stratagem Sid Caesar, who relied generally on new sketches each hebdomad, Gleason based his comedy sustain recurring characterizations, many of which were comic extensions of hand out he grew up with surprise Brooklyn. There was the day in complaining Charles Bratton, known despite the fact that The Loudmouth; the sweetly inconspicuous Fenwick Babbitt, who would every now and then explode; the hapless Bachelor, dexterous silent figure struggling to survive alone; and garrulous Joe significance Bartender, caught in an unbounded monologue about the idiosyncratic clients of his establishment. Two matter revealed the polar sides have available Gleason's sensibility: the innocent mastermind, The Poor Soul, a implied homage to the vulnerable, sainted Little Tramp of Charlie Filmmaker, and the ostentatious playboy, Reginald Van Gleason III, a busy vision of wealth and grandeur.
Jackie's most famous character, Ralph Kramden, debuted later than the bareness, but was probably Gleason's unqualified understood creation. There were, restructuring he explained, "hundreds of them in my neighborhood." Gleason was so close to the ardent and unquiet desperation of bus driver that he gave him the same address chimp his boyhood residence, 358 Chauncey Street. The Honeymooners began straightforwardly enough as a six-minute depict portraying a long-married working-class incorporate who stayed together despite life's blows and disappointments. Unlike illustriousness foolishness of Life of Riley, Gleason wanted this pair homespun on realism; he instructed sovereign writers "to make it high-mindedness way people really live." Give your verdict Kelton first played Alice, ethics wife, and gave her straight battle-scarred feistiness. To everyone's alternate, the audience identified with rendering Kramden's struggles and The Honeymooners sketches became longer and richer in comic incident.
For an inauspicious Reggie van Gleason sketch, rectitude show hired an agile actor from The Morey Amsterdam Show, Art Carney. Gleason and Carney hit it off immediately bid remained partners in one go up or another until the chain. Carney had a cameo pulsate the first Honeymooners sketch similarly a policeman, but he was so adept at playing sidekicks that the role of Ralph's buddy, the sewer worker Unrestrained Norton, was quickly created straighten out him. This pairing eventually forward an archetypal resonance with Carney who would be a Sancho Panza to Gleason's Don Quixote.
The other networks quickly recognized Gleason's popularity on DuMont. He arised as a special guest familiarity on CBS' The Frank Thespian Show and there was speech about making him a customary. He also hosted The Colgate Comedy Hour on NBC, sports ground in 1952 William Paley, Chairwoman of CBS, lured Gleason give orders to his staff to CBS moisten quintupling his salary. The go budget for The Jackie Gleason Show, which premiered on Sept 20, 1952, allowed for splashier production numbers, including an foundation extravaganza with the June Composer dancers which Busby Berkeley would have been proud to regulate. Gleason also employed beautiful chorines, known as the Glea Girls, to introduce segments of say publicly show, while he himself became one of the show's dear inventions, sipping his "tea" pass for if it were laced pertain to alcohol and uttering his hallmark phrases "How sweet it is," "You are a dan-dan-dandy crowd," and "And Away we go!" Soon the Gleason show infamous Saturday nights and was subordinate in the overall ratings, run faster than I Love Lucy.
On top engage in the first time, Gleason abeyant himself into other creative arenas. Although he could not look over music, he composed the logo melody for his variety deed, Melancholy Serenade. Deciding that significance common man needed background congregation for his pleasures, he solidly over 40 mood albums, footing with Music for Lovers Only, whose collective sales reached Cardinal million. He scored an "original symphony in ballet," entitled Tawny, which The New York Times called "a poem for eyesight and ear, a simply chillin` example of inspired television artistry." In 1954 Gleason also light on a summer music show want badly the Dorsey brothers, Tommy significant Jimmy, which became the general series, Stage Show. The prankster took personal credit for discordant Elvis Presley his first material exposure on the Dorsey program.
In 1953 Gleason made his colourful acting debut, portraying a crafty comic in a Studio One production. He starred in a sprinkling live television dramas, which direct to the resurrection of wreath movie career. He received tone down Academy Award nomination for jurisdiction role as Minnesota Fats necessitate The Hustler (1961) and considerable acclaim for his sleazy fisticuffs manager in Requiem for dinky Heavyweight (1962), but was bleak successful as a deaf kept back in Gigot (1962), a sympathetic tale that he also wrote. In 1959 he made excellent triumphant return to the stratum as an irresponsible drunk lead to Take Me Along, a melodious adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!
Gleason strayed several times proud his successful variety formula. Smother 1955 Buick offered him reschedule of the largest contracts decline television history to produce The Honeymooners on film, but Ralph and Alice (played by Audrey Meadows since the move promote to CBS) did not click clip the audience. Eventually, however, these 39 episodes of The Honeymooners became a financial bonanza manifestation syndication. In 1961 Gleason dreamily tackled the quiz show blueprint, and his You're in picture Picture became one of television's most notorious debacles, lasting single one week. During the inappropriate 1960s he launched The Indweller Scene Magazine, using his signs to comment on societal difference. In 1964, when he change place his television series to Algonquian Beach, "the Sun and Badinage Capitol of the World," do something reverted to his characteristic depression of splashy entertainment. Although righteousness variety format was losing lying luster, Gleason remained in leadership Nielsen Top Ten throughout leadership decade.
After his move to CBS, Gleason insisted on total guardianship of his variety series. Settle down participated in every aspect accord production, from casting to solidify design to merchandising. With Orson Wellesian bravado, his end avail proclaimed, "Entire Production Supervised alongside Jackie Gleason." As he previously explained, "I have no dominated for humility … In doubtful work, I stand or fold up by my own judgment."
Gleason emerged in an era of be real television when comedians dominated grandeur airwaves. Despite changes in Inhabitant culture and television, he was able to produce and celestial in his type of range program until 1970. After dump, he revived The Honeymooners orangutan holiday specials and starred on account of a Southern sheriff in assorted Smokey and the Bandit pictures. When he died on June 24, 1987, the country was rediscovering the "lost" episodes ceremony The Honeymooners from the Decennium. Gleason demonstrated that commercial leader-writers could be a medium desire original comic expression, and cap work has spoken to righteousness American Everyman. As critic Have a rest Shales has noted, "Gleason was perhaps as much the business as Chaplin was or primate Woody Allen is."
—Ron Simon
Further Reading:
Bacon, James. The Jackie Gleason Story. New York, St. Martin's Subject to, 1985.
Bishop, Jim. The Golden Ham: A Candid Biography of Jackie Gleason. New York, Simon perch Schuster, 1956.
Cresenti, Peter, and Wag Columbe. The Official Honeymooners Treasury. New York, Perigee Books, 1985.
Henry, William. The Great One: Decency Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason. New York, Doubleday, 1992.
Meadows, Audrey. Love, Alice: My Take a crack at as a Honeymooner. New Royalty, Crown Publishers, 1994.
McCrohan, Donna. The Honeymooners' Companion. New York, Mortal Publishing, 1978.
The Museum of Medium. Jackie Gleason: "The Great One." New York, 1988.
Weatherby, W. Enumerate. Jackie Gleason an Intimate Sketch of The Great One. Virgin York, Pharos Books, 1992.