Jackie Gleason must be counted among Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Red Skelton in the small group of creative comedy-variety stars who dominated, and to some degree invented, early television. Perhaps more than any of the others he explored the limits of broad physical gesture and loud verbal bombast in the contextual frame of the small screen. His highly stylized and adroitly choreographed blustering, prancing, smirking and double-taking led Gilbert Seldes to describe Gleason as "...a heavy man with the traditional belief of heavy men in their own lightness and grace." Whether burning a finger, stubbing a toe or getting caught in a lie, Gleason's work in the 1950s constitutes a vital contribution to the invention of television comedy.
Born in a poor section of Brooklyn and abandoned by an alcoholic father, he dropped out of school at an early age and supported himself as a pool hustler, professional boxer and carnival barker before establishing himself as "Jumpin' Jack" Gleason, a nightclub comic and vaudeville emcee known for his spirited exchanges with hecklers. Following a brief, unsuccessful stint in Hollywood as a Warner Brothers contract
er, Gleason's career reached an apparent plateau. He worked as a stand-up comic and a master of ceremonies in venues ranging from middle-level nightspots to seamy dives in the New York area.
In 1949, at age 33, he was handed the title role in a TV adaptation of The Life of Riley, a popular radio series about a culturally displaced Brooklyn factory worker who follows his job to a new life in a Southern California suburb. The plodding, moralistic narrative structure of the sitcom, however, obscured Gleason's verbal rancor and physical comedy. The series was not renewed, though it was successfully revived several years later when its radio star, William Bendix, was freed from a movie contract that had enjoined him from appearing on television.
Gleason was once again called on as a substitute when Jerry Lester, the host of DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars, suddenly quit the show in 1950. This time it turned out be the break of his career. The live-from-New York, comedy-variety format played directly to Gleason's strengths, allowing him to wisecrack as emcee, to engage in off-the-cuff chats with guests and to move in and out of short sketch material that emphasized physical humor rather than narrative resolution. The show became DuMont's biggest success.
It was on Cavalcade that Gleason originated most of the sketch characters he would play for the rest of his career: the absurdly ostentatious millionaire Reginald Van Gleason, III; The Poor Soul, a pathetic street character played in pantomime; the hapless, bumbling Bachelor; and, his greatest creation, Ralph Kramden, a bus driver tortured by a life that will not support his ego. All were to some degree autobiographical fantasies, personal visions of despair and grandeur culled from his poverty-stricken Brooklyn childhood, meditations on who the comedian could, would or might have been. It was on the DuMont show that Gleason created his persona of The Great One; he also began his life-long association with Art Carney, a Cavalcade regular.
Impressed by Gleason's performance on the screen and in the ratings, William Paley personally wooed the star away, offering him five times his DuMont salary and the far greater market coverage of CBS. The Jackie Gleason Show debuted in 1952, quickly propelling the comedian into national stardom. By 1954, Gleason was second only to Lucille
physical humor rather than narrative resolution. The show became DuMont's biggest success.
It was on Cavalcade that Gleason originated most of the sketch characters he would play for the rest of his career: the absurdly ostentatious millionaire Reginald Van Gleason, III; The Poor Soul, a pathetic street character played in pantomime; the hapless, bumbling Bachelor; and, his greatest creation, Ralph Kramden, a bus driver tortured by a life that will not support his ego. All were to some degree autobiographical fantasies, personal visions of despair and grandeur culled from his poverty-stricken Brooklyn childhood, meditations on who the comedian could, would or might have been. It was on the DuMont show that Gleason created his persona of The Great One; he also began his life-long association with Art Carney, a Cavalcade regular.
Impressed by Gleason's performance on the screen and in the ratings, William Paley personally wooed the star away, offering him five times his DuMont salary and the far greater market coverage of CBS. The Jackie Gleason Show debuted in 1952, quickly propelling the comedian into national stardom. By 1954, Gleason was second only to Lucille Ball in the ratings. Taking advantage of this success, he secured rights that allowed him to thoroughly dominate every aspect of production, from casting to set design to script approval.
Glitz was Gleason's watchword. The June Taylor Dancers opened each show with a high-stepping chorus-line dance number that always included at least one overhead kaleidoscope shot of the Busby Berkely variety. A troupe of personally-auditioned beauties, known as The Glea Girls, escorted the star around the stage and brought him "coffee" (he always sipped it as if were something stronger) and lit his cigarettes on camera. Unable to read music, Gleason composed his own musical theme, "Melancholy Serenade," which he hummed out for a professional songwriter. (Gleason also produced several gold albums of romantic music this way in an LP series titled "For Lovers Only.") The show ended each week with an unprecedented but justifiable personal credit: "Entire Production Supervised by Jackie Gleason."
Riding high, the comedian paid little attention to the relationship between his sudden rise in fortune and the medium that had facilitated it. The Gleason style was utterly suited to 1950s comedy-variety: the vaudeville trappings, including a live audience; the emphasis on slapstick, constant close-ups, blackout segues, splintered segments and so on. But ever the arriviste, the star remained extremely defensive about his talents and status, yearning to prove himself in "higher" forms, especially the movies.
Attempting to make time for new ventures, he came up with a radical format for retaining his CBS Saturday night hour in the 1955-56 season. Gleason repackaged the most popular feature of his show, The Honeymooners, into a 30-minute sitcom, while the second half of the hour was contracted to the Dorsey Brothers for a big-band musical program. The best of the old Ralph Kramden sketch material was reworked into the thirty-nine Honeymooners episodes that have run in continuous syndication ever since.
For pure economy of style and setting, The Honeymooners has never quite been equaled. Often using only a single set, rarely employing more than four regular characters, each episode is completely dependent upon the bravura performances of the show's stars: Gleason, as Ralph Kramden, the incorrigible egoist who, when not
