'Honeymooners' Actor Frank Marth Dies at 91

The Hollywood Reporter ^ | 1/13/2014

[Borges]

Frank Marth, a veteran character actor and member of Jackie Gleason's stock company on The Honeymooners, died Sunday of congestive heart failure and Alzheimer’s disease in Rancho Mirage, Calif., a family friend told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 91.

***

The tall and slender Marth, though, is probably best remembered for his assortment of background roles on The Honeymooners, which starred Gleason and Audrey Meadows as Ralph and Alice Kramden, with Art Carney as their upstairs neighbor, Ed Norton. Marth played Harvey Wohlstetter, who hires Alice to babysit his son, Harvey Jr., as Ralph jumps to conclusions and thinks his wife is having an affair. He was one of the hoods who holds the Kramdens and Norton hostage after Ralph witnesses a bank robbery, the newsman who gets Ralph in trouble at home after he quotes the bus driver in the paper boasting that he's the "head of the household," and the off-screen narrator of Norton's favorite TV show, Captain Video. Other "classic 39" episodes had him as Ralph's co-worker or pool-room buddy. Before and after The Honeymooners in the mid-1950s, Marth worked with Gleason on the comedian's variety shows Cavalcade of Stars and American Scene Magazine, the latter beamed from Miami Beach, Fla.

In Meadows' 1994 book Love, Alice: My Life as a Honeymooner, Marth noted that Gleason always called him Francis. On the show, "I always felt like I was going to a party, instead of work," he recalled. "It was such a blast."

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

More like free air. Broadcast was “free”, but you paid a price in quality, it had commercials. Then along came cable, and you paid directly, without those annoying, oh, never mind.

[oh8eleven]

Why does everyone still believe in the free lunch?
Your point is ...?

[Jack Hydrazine]

There is no such thing and never has been but people still think it exists.

[JPG]

From the episode 'Funny Money' where Ralph finds a large suitcase full of cash:

Alice's Mom: Look Alice, just because you're married to a horse doesn't mean you have to live in a stable.

Ralph: This place isn't big enough for you and me! Alice's mom: This place isn't big enough for you and anybody!

(seeing the large suitcase) Alice's mom: (to Ralph) What is that, your lunch box?

[oh8eleven]

And your worldly knowledge and philosophy relate to Golden Age TV, how?

[1217Chic]

Hysterical....that and “Mamma loves Mombo”

[Jack Hydrazine]

Thinking that TV is free.

First you buy the TV so that isn’t free.

Then the ad campaigns that are used on TV get factored into the price of the product. It’s is the customer that is paying for the program one way or another whether over-the-air or by way of cable.

Now do you understand?

[abb]

Here’s the list.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0551731/

[murron]

You can get a lot of old Honeymooners episodes on Youtube.
Also Amos & Andy.

[Balding_Eagle]

I’m not going to argue with ‘there is no free lunch’, but there is one channel we get on digital TV (I’m so out of touch I’m not sure if there is any other kind). For us it’s on 14.3 and I think it’s called GET TV. No commercials, ever. Just old movies back to back.

I’ve wondered who and why that channel is on.

[Jack Hydrazine]

But somebody is paying for it.

Again, no free lunch.

[GeronL]

There are also a lot on Youtube. There is even a “John Wayne Channel”

[Lazamataz]

Everything is free. Gibsmedat.

[Balding_Eagle]

Of course someone is paying for it.

My question is what could be their motivation to broadcast at what appears to be without a source of income.

[oh8eleven]

Now do you understand?
My point was that TV programming was free back in the day, i.e., no cable bill. So simple even a caveman could understand ... but not you.
Not the cost of the TV, not the cost of an antenna, nor the burden of having to tolerate 12 minutes of commercials per hour.
But there's always one feckin' know-it-all who just can't grasp a simple concept, sticks his foot in his mouth, then tries to blame someone else.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Good question. Send an email to the broadcast provider.

[Jack Hydrazine]

TV programming was not free back in the day. You stilled paid for it with the gasoline you bought, the laundry detergent you bought, and anything else you bought. The price of the product was higher because the advertising was factored into it.

Who paid for program? The advertisers! Who paid the advertising agencies to create those TV ads? The product manufacturers. How did the manufacturers pay for those ads? By adding it to the cost of the manufacture of the product(s) which you and I paid for.

See?

Plus, you have to pay for electricity to power the darn thing.

There’s still no thing as a free lunch. Never has been, never will be.

[pke]

Cool. Thanks for the pictures.

[Harold Shea]

I was thinking Jackie Gleason lived in Hollywood.

Seem to remember a Jackie Gleason show where he

came out and sat on a chair and apologized for

it being such a stinker and he canceled it himself.

RIP Frank

[mwilli20]

I am guessing that this is a secondary bit of bandwidth that the owner of 14 paid for when they bought spectrum. They make money on 14.1 and use a little bit of that money to buy the (now cheap) old movies to make the whole 14 package more attractive to a cable bundler.

Just out of curosity what's on 14.1?