Posted on 02/26/2016 11:41:53 AM PST by Borges
Born 100 years ago (today), Jackie Gleason rose to the top of comedy thanks to his larger than life personality and rigorous work ethic.
The mood of the photo essay is a strange one: Jackie Gleason’s soon-to-be hit show The Honeymooners was about to hit the airwaves, but the star’s look in the pages of that 1955 issue of LIFE was melancholy. The entertainer, as the magazine explained, had “just become, by financial standards at least, history’s greatest comedian.†He was raking in millions between his weekly Jackie Gleason Show and new contracts with Buick and CBS for The Honeymooners. “No other actor in the world,†the magazine declared, “ever had it so good as this 39-year-old, Brooklyn-born comedian with a 265-pound body, a bellowing voice and a superb instinct for theater.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
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.
“How sweet it is......”
Beat me by 5 seconds.....
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.
The film’s story was Gleason’s idea and he also wrote the musical score.
Bob Hope:
“For my workout today I ran 3 laps.....around Jackie Gleason.”
“And awaaaaay we go!”
Gleason had more talent in his little finger than most of these so-called “edgy” comics of today have combined.
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.
Gigot directed by MY hero, Gene Kelly.
“Buford T Justice” was one of the greatest movie comedy roles.
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