Anyone with 30’s & 40’s era East Coast relatives immediately bonded with Jackie Gleason.
Gigot should have won him an Academy Award. what a revelation that was to people who only knew him as a TV guy.
A few years ago I drove past the Gleason Theater in Miami Beach & remembered that, for a few years of this very young kids life, a typical Saturday night consisted of a bath, Flipper, Get Smart & Jackie Gleason. In that order.
He also was as fine an actor as I’ve seen in my lifetime. His work in The Hustler, and in Gigot, is in a league by itself. It Gigot, he played a French ragamuffin deaf/mute; so he dominated the screen by his bodily and facial gestures alone. Remarkable.
Bob Hope:
“For my workout today I ran 3 laps.....around Jackie Gleason.”
Not that this has much to do with the article, but I have a friend who was a Jackie Gleason fanatic. He even bought Jackie Gleason’s bed. I slept in it when I went to visit once.
If you can find a copy read “The Golden Ham.” Gleason drank and partied like there was no tomorrow.
“Ah-homina-homina....”
My Dad detested JG, probably because JG embodied many of the habit patterns of my Dad, LOL.
When you look at those early episodes of the Honeymooners, with the speculars (the 4 squares of “sunlight” painted on the wall) and the white moldings on the door and the various tricks that were used to fool the very insensitive cameras of the day...it’s beyond charming, so innocent.
It was actually a sort of prototype of Seinfeld, if you think of it. Except it was performed live.
Most people under 50 have never heard of Jackie Gleason, or don’t know how famous he once was. I enjoyed his tv shows in the 60’s and 70’s. Jackie G. was similar to Lucille Ball, in that both had a public persona of being funny, wild, maybe less than bright onstage, while in private they were both very serious, pragmatic business people with a job to do and a schedule to keep.
One day, Alice!
One day!
Pow!
Straight to the moon!
To this day I get a nice warm feeling hearing his theme.
He would almost always end a skit with a line something like 'Baby, you're the greatest' (to his stage wife.)
NO ONE could handle a live audience like Gleason!
And he thought so much of Johnny Olson’s announcing work, he personally arranged to have Johnny flown to and from Miami to announce for his show when it was taped there.
About 10 - 12 years ago, Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond played Jackie Gleason in a made for TV biography called “Gleason.” He did a fantastic job in this role. If you watch Garrett on ELR, you’ll see a lot of Ralph Kranden’s facial expressions and mannerisms come through in Garrett’s character, Robert Barone.
See what is written on his headstone.
His performance as Minnesota Fats is one of the great screen characters - gripping, relentless, legendary.