Jackie Gleason

The wife and I watched Smokey and the Bandit the other day for the umpteenth time.

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Just caught an episode with Jackie Gleason

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THE episode with Jackie Gleason

He did one Tonight Show episode. That was it.

I think 1985

He was promoting the video release of the lost Honeymooners episodes

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a show that only lasted 39 episodes

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those are the filmed episodes

About 100 Honeymooners sketches were done live on his '50s variety show. These would not be seen again until they were released in the mid '80s as "The Lost Honeymooners"

His last role as Max Basner in Nothing In Common with Tom Hanks and Eva Marie Saint was fantastic.

“And awaaay we go”
“How sweet it is !”

Two of my dads favorite quotes.

The classic 39 filmed episodes are admittedly superlative. But, I also have a strange fondness for the later, hour-long "Color Honeymooners" episodes from 1966-70. There's something so genial about them, with variety-show bits by the June Taylor dancers, and a lot of humor catering to the now-older Gleason fanbase. I even bought the dvds of them. Alice was played in these by Sheila MacCrea, momma of Meredith (who was one of the Bradley girls of Petticoat Junction girls at the same time). And Trixie was played by Jane Kean, who started out with her sister Betty, doing a vaudeville-tinged comedy-dance act in their early days. I remember Betty particularly from a wartime era b-comedy "Moonlight Masquerade" performing a dance number on a Pullman train.

Nope, never seen that '67 episode before. Seems to be worth a look. I know I'm pretty alone in my affection for the color eps. But I've often had a weird fascination for those late-period artifacts bucking the hipster cultural waves of the late-60s/early-70s. Red Skelton, Mayberry RFD, The Jimmy Stewart Show, Wild Kingdom, etc.

Of the early Honeymooners kinescope period, I recall a few examples with Pert Kelton as Alice. Couldn't quite take her. She's just too hardcase.

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I've often had a weird fascination for those late-period artifacts bucking the hipster cultural waves of the late-60s/early-70s. Red Skelton, Mayberry RFD, The Jimmy Stewart Show

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I have a fondness for a subgenre w/in that oeuvre, where the prerock generation tries to be relevant, such as Gleason's movie Skidoo, his movie w/Hope How To Commit Marriage, or this classic clip:

Skidoo is like a mediocre B&W I Dream of Jeannie episode where all the jokes have been removed.

The screenwriter warned Preminger the script wasn't ready, but Otto was determined to cash in on hippies before the fad ended.

I have to admit there is a weird fascination about watching Groucho try to take a girl's clothes off while staring at his cue cards.

HTCM is a masterpiece by comparison, w/a few funny lines (mostly Hope's insults toward Gleason) & one actual good sequence, where Hope plays golf against a chimp.

Trivia Tidbit: the so-called rock group in HTCM, The Comfortable Chair, wasn't some elderly scriptwriter's patronizing invention, but... An actual band! (they even opened for The Doors)