'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."

[mwilli20]

I have always wondered, with the gillion channels now available on a modern cable package, is there really NO ROOM for some Honeymooner re-runs??? REALLY?!?!?!

[Balding_Eagle]

That make sense.
14.1 is a Spanish channel, I think it has commercials, I never watch it. Right now it appears to be a sort of Oprah type tell all your sleazy secrets show.
14.2 is showing an American movie. It’s saying ‘Bounce’ in the lower right. I think it has commercials too, and must just be a low grade channel, as I never find anything of interest on it. Oh, wait, I watched Seinfeld there one time I think.
The channel I was asking about 14.3 shows about a half dozen different movies over and over. Jane Russell stars in one, to give a time frame to the year. She’s an awful actress BTW!

[trustnooneever]

but can it core an apple?

[trustnooneever]

wpix has em saturday and sunday....metv has em saturday nights

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[fieldmarshaldj]

This is a bit more about what you’re remembering, which you might find of interest:

http://www.tvobscurities.com/spotlight/youre-in-the-picture-the-jackie-gleason-show/

[P.O.E.]

Honeymooners set the mold for all sorts of TV shows, characters, etc.

It’s a shame Amos & Andy got shunted - it’s no more racist than “good times” and twenty times funnier.

[Harold Shea]

A very good find,thanks.

[exit82]

Thanks for the pix—I was wondering what it looked like.

All that is missing is some stone June Taylor dancers.

[Revolting cat!]

So tell us, since you clearly know so much. I wasn’t there or anywhere when the Honeymooners was on prime TV, that as you insist wasn’t free, because as you wholly original thought informs us “there is no free lunch”. If someone was there in 1955, owned a TV, so let’s subtract the price of the TV set from the equation, but did not watch it, then would he find additional cash in this pocket, because TV was not free? And let us say that he used generic laundry detergent which didn’t advertise, or made his own, didn’t smoke cigarettes, etc, would The Honeymooners not be free for him? We’ve got to carry our Captain Obvious philosophical treatise to their logical conclusion. Yes, TV was free in 1955, and everyone already understands that advertising paid for it, and that GASP! TV sets cost money. The broadcasts over the air were still free to receive.