It's interesting that The Honeymooners, arguably the most-beloved 50s sitcom that didn't star a wacky redhead, only lasted 39 episodes, as compared to 180 for I Love Lucy (not counting the 13 hour-long episodes produced over the three years after the weekly series came to an end), 203 episodes of Father Knows Best, 234 episodes of Leave It to Beaver, and a whopping 435 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Of course, there are a lot more Honeymooners than those episodes, as the characters of blowhard bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason), his tart-tongued wife Alice (Audrey Meadows), his rather naive best friend Ed Norton (patron saint of this column Art Carney) and his wife Trixie (Joyce Randolph) originated from sketches on Gleason's variety show. The Honeymooners quickly became the most popular recurring characters on the show, and in 1955, CBS and Gleason agreed to end the variety show in favor of a half-hour Honeymooners sitcom.
Both sides came to regret the decision. Gleason found himself stifled by having to both come up with a new storyline for the characters every week as well as having to time each episode out to the specific requirements of a thirty-minute time slot (on his variety show, the sketches could be as long or as short as he pleased). While initially thrilled with the ratings, CBS watched as they dropped throughout the 1955-1956 season, and at the end of it, the two sides agreed to end production on the sitcom and revive Gleason's variety show, in which The Honeymooners would continue to have a prominent place. Gleason would continue to play Ralph on various variety series over the next 14 years, before his final series was cancelled by CBS. When the 25th anniversary of the sketch rolled around in 1976, it was surprisingly ABC, not CBS, that aired it, bringing a reunion of Gleason, Carney, and Meadows (who had left the show after Gleason decided to relocate filming to his home base of Miami). The show was a hit, and ABC signed the group to make two more specials for 1976-1977, though they got postponed for a year, possibly because Gleason landed a movie role as as a Texas sheriff relentlessly pursuing a bootlegger in a Trans-Am across the entire South.
The second Honeymooners special, this one focusing on Christmas, would finally reach the air in late November 1977, followed by a Valentine's special the following February and a second Christmas special that December.
The 1977 one is the more ridiculous of the pair, and hence, the funnier one. Filmed in Miami, Gleason makes sure to work in some mentions of the city early on (to the great cheers of the audience) as Ralph and Alice are planning a Christmas week vacation there. That goes out the window when Ralph's boss (guest star Gale Gordan, Lucille Ball's regular foil) asks him if he knows who might make a good director for his wife's Christmas play, and Ralph, hoping to get in good with him, volunteers, despite not knowing a thing about directing a play. The show ends up being a rather demented version of A Christmas Carol, minus the ghosts, with Ralph as Bob Cratchit, Alice as Mrs. Cratchit, Trixie (Jane Kean, who had long replaced Joyce Randolph in the role) as their daughter, and Ed in the duel role of Scrooge and Tiny Tim, a part that frequently required him to rush offstage in the middle of a scene and show back up immediately as the other character, often still mostly dressed as the other character. Even funnier was the fact that Ralph had essentially funded the play by selling commercial time, meaning, in a play supposedly set in Victorian England, he'd occasionally start talking about, for example, the great deal that the local pizzeria was running.
While the 1978 Christmas special (filmed in Atlantic City) was also funny, Ralph's actions were more egregious here, and therefore, it was more serious, even poignant. Ralph cleans out his bank account, cashes in his insurance, convinces Ed to give him his Christmas bonus, and even steals Alice's father's social security check to buy lottery tickets, convinced by a fortune teller that he was about to become rich. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with Alice or Trixie, or for that matter, Alice's mother (guest star Eileen Heckart, who was only three years older than Meadows) who never much liked Ralph anyway. There is some very funny stuff in this one, most of which involves Ed or a cat-shaped radio, but there is some real bitterness here, and even though (of course) things work out all right, the special ends not with farce, but with Alice giving Ralph a pointed "The Reasons You Suck" speech, followed by a heartfelt apology.
Viewers used to the sitcom might find the specials rather jarring, both because they're in color, but also the contemporary-for-then jokes. The 1977 special had a joke whose punchline referenced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the 1978 special mentioned Ricardo Montalban and Fantasy Island, and when she catches Ralph and Ed in a potentially compromising situation, Alice's mother screams "I'm calling Anita Bryant!" (no, that joke did not age well at all). Still, even with the humor that was already old-fashioned circa the late 1970s, there is a lot to like in these. Gleason is fine, and Carney and Meadows are in top form.
Johnny Olsen served as the announcer on both specials, and even got some camera time in 1977, playing the play's town crier, and even almost said "Come on down!" (I'm guessing the writers didn't want to risk running afoul of CBS or Goodson/Todman).
In retrospect, these specials were especially poignant because the 1978 special would be the final time that Gleason, Carney, or Meadows would play these characters in a scripted format (Carney would revive Norton in the early aughts for commercials promoting Honeymooners reruns on TV Land). Carney and Gleason would have one final team-up, for a CBS movie, in 1985, before Gleason died in 1987. Meadows and Carney would continue to make numerous TV and occasional movie appearances until their deaths in 1996 and 2003, respectively.
These last glimpses of The Honeymooners in its (mostly) original form aren't nearly as funny as the original TV show was, but they are still quite amusing. Jackie Gleason and company could have found far worse ways to send some of the most iconic TV characters of all time into retirement, and I'm glad they were able to finish on a fairly high note.
Next time: How the witch stole Christmas and how the forgotten line of toys saved it
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