Why is “The Honeymooners” Forgotten?

Jackie Gleason isn’t even remembered the way Lucy or Desi are. I’ve never been much of a Gleason fan, but he was an important part of early television.

When I was a kid, Jackie Gleason scared me and I always left the room when that show was on.

Dude! Abuse is never funny!

Do you mean that other very old people don't bring it up? none of those shows are beloved by audiences of all ages, not even close

What OP??? Not a classic. Lol. There’s a statue of Jackie as Ralph in front of the Port Authority

Too few episodes were made for wide syndication.

2 things always astonished me about this show:

1) It only ran 1 season.

2) The Flintstones was a cartoon complete copy of the Honeymooners. (I didn't put that together until I was like 20).

It's shot on kinescope with a static camera and doesn't look good.

Look at the Blu-rays of I Love Lucy, shot on film with Karl Freund as DP, and except for black and white and the sound not being full stereo, they practically could have been shot yesterday: the image is sharp and clear and the sound is as modern as a mono track can sound.

Also I Love Lucy fits into two other tv empires: 25 years of Lucille Ball series in top 10 network TV, and the Desilu empire (all the series that had their imprint they didn't star in.)

Gleason had his albums.

Next thread: which is worse, the color Honeymooners musical episodes or the latter seasons of Here's Lucy?

Desi Arnaz was a genius.

OP, you are a troll who makes things up.

Really, in a certain demographic the Honeymooners are as well loved as any other show, and maybe more. The classic 39 are called that for a good reason.

For 50 years The Honeymooners was a huge part of pop culture.

It's hardly forgotten.

Still on MeTV on Sunday nights. Still plays on channel 11 in marathons on holidays.

R39 The “39” were shot on film. The “Lost Episodes” which were sketches on the live show are kinescopes.

I didn’t realize he Honeymooners has been forgotten. News to me.

Everyone from I Love Lucy is dead, but Joyce Randolph is still alive. They should do a reboot to refresh interest.

“The Honeymooners” is wonderful but there's an edge to it. From the run down apartment to the anger and disappointment running through the scripts. It's just not going to have the kind of universal appeal that ILL has.

Jackie owned the shows and when VCR tapes became the rage around 1980 he made a(nother) fortune off them.

Those loud nasty people were like my parents. Why watch a tv show when I had them live and in color 24x7?

This is an idiot thread, started by an idiot. "The Honeymooners" is one of the best-remembered and most beloved television shows of all time. It's never been off television since the 1950s.

Because his son-in-law’s mother sucked cocks in hell!

[quote]Everyone from I Love Lucy is dead.

Little Ricky is 73.

Mrs. Trumbull is 205.

It's loved by those who love it. It was always too dingy for me.

Not entirely forgotten

It's amazing to me his grandson is Jason Patric - not sure I see the resemblance.

[quote] "The Honeymooners" is one of the best-remembered and most beloved television shows of all time.

Except it ain’t, gramps.

I remember a brief revival in the early 60s on Jackie’s American Scene Magazine TV show with Sue Ane Langdon as Alice. Then the full revival in color with Sheila MacRae as Alice and Jane Kean as But even when Audrey Meadows returned as Alice for some specials, Jackie didn’t bring back Joyce Randolph and still used Jane Kean. Wonder why?

*Jane Kean as Alice.

The set is very drab. It looks like they live in a tenement

Amazing observation.

[quote]Jackie didn’t bring back Joyce Randolph and still used Jane Kean. Wonder why?

I saw Joyce Randolph at Sardi's. She had just bought new shoes and proceeded to put them on and show them off.

Joyce Randolph is still alive at 99.--a 2016 pic is linked.

She gives some vague excuse for not returning to her role. She married money when she did The Honeymooners and later had a child. Her wiki mentions other appearances in summer stock and also appearing in "Honey I'm Home" as Trixie.

Ralph was abusive towards Alice, and all they ever did was fight.

[quote]Except it ain’t, gramps.

According to you. But you're a moron, so your opinion doesn't carry much weight.

[R15] Thanks for correcting that incorrect comment about the quality of the "Classic 39" which are the best. The other, so called "lost" episodes which are kinescopes and were segments on Gleason's shows are not as good as the "39". They are classics

The Honeymooners was VERY funny- the classic 39 episodes.

WOW that's a lot of episodes for one season.

Alice's mother- Officer, arrest the FAT one!

Ralph- But Mama, I'm sonny boy.

The set is very drab. It looks like they live in a tenement

R31 They did, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn although the street address used was that of Jackie Gleason when he was a kid and is located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

It did age well. It’s one of the greatest shows of all time.

I always hated any iteration of Lucy (even when I was a small child) and I always loved The Honeymooners. Still do. And both are on OTA TV.

Golf, anyone?

It's big with a straight guys sort of like the Three Stooges too.

R39: More like Bushwick. There's a local subway stop for Chauncey Street. I've been in that area for work.

Is it even in syndication? The show is complete forgotten except to 80 year olds.

R34- I just it looked up- Joyce Randolph has a net worth of $10 million- probably from her executive husband.

[quote]Is it even in syndication?

According to R14 it is.

I met her son once decades. Insufferable homo.

R43- I never cared for Madonna or Bette Midler but this gay guy- me- likes The Honeymooners a lot. I like I Love Lucy but the Honeymooners ( yes I know we are only talking about the 39 episodes and I Love Lucy had about 180) was funnier.

It’s like a sitcom adaptation of Sartre’s No Exit.

"Nobody knows who [NAME] was from the [DECADE] who [ART FORM VERB, PAST TENSE] [ART FORM OBJECT]."

One of two things, or both, will be true:

The artist and work do not merit remembrance or at least not any negative judgment delivered upon the unknowing.

OR:

The unknowing are woefully ignorant of an important part of our collective cultural and creative past.

Most times, I lean towards the latter.

It aired in the NYC area on WPIX at 11:00 weeknights for what must have been decades and they still run marathons of it occasionally as someone above mentioned. I don’t think it was as popular or prominent in the rest of the country.

Or was shown in LA -/the same as in NY

Domestic abuse is no longer funny.

I must have missed that episode.

Gleason and Carney always seemed self aware in their scenes, they knew they were funny, they played to the audience. The show had an Off-Broadway quality which was part of it's charm.

But Lucy and Vivian truly seemed to live their characters. It was as if you were peeking in on them.

Watch this scene from 0:57...it is a MASTER CLASS in acting.

Gleason and Carney in comparison seemed like Vaudeville performers.

R56 And yet Art Carney managed to win six Emmys and be nominated for another six, as well as winning a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actor.

And Gleason won a Tony award for best lead actor in a musical, was nominated for an Academy Award, and nominated for five or six Emmys.

I love Lucy (lol) and Vivian, too - they were great. But it’s apples and oranges. And some of those Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy episodes were pretty dire.

R57 And Gleason and Carney deserved every award.

But Lucy and Viv... when they were rocking, IMHO no comic duo comes close.

[quote]And some of those Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy episodes were pretty dire.

"Some" is kind.

[quote]According to you. But you're a moron, so your opinion doesn't carry much weight.

Not as much as your mother when she was reverse cowgirl riding me last night.

[quote] More like Bushwick. There's a local subway stop for Chauncey Street. I've been in that area for work.

R44 Yes, I’ve seen that address listed several ways. The USPS calls it Ocean Hill, and Wikipedia calls Ocean Hill a subsection of Bed-Stuy. Google Maps calls it “Ocean Hill/Brownsville (why anyone would enlarge Brownsville is beyond me, because it’s one of the most dangerous sections of NYC). Some of the real estate listings I’ve seen state the address is in Bed-Stuy. EasyStreet calls it Stuyvesant Heights. I think all of these are Brooklynese euphemisms for “tough neighborhood,” as it was when Jackie Gleason was a kid.

It's considered classic television and has been recognized as such by many institutions. It just isn't as popular with the public as ILL

It appears on Pluto TV all of the time.

I am still laughing at lines from The Honeymooners.

In Once upon a time in Hollywood Brad Pitt says 'and away we go' as they load him into the ambulance at the end, and also I think when he lights up the lsd laced joint. Wasn't 'away we go' associated with Ralph Kramden?

The theme to the Honeymooners was written by Jackie Gleason, btw.

Ralph and Alice were hilarious

I’ve seen more parodies of it than actually seeing it.

It’s just super old.

It's old but funny. Good comedy is .

R64 It was what Jackie said at the beginning of his show, He’d ask for “a little traveling music” then he’d say, “And away-y-y-y- we go!”

Nothing to do with the character of Ralph Kramden though.

R68 👍