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In 1955, Gleason gambled on making it a separate series entirely. These are the "Classic 39" episodes, which finished 19th in the ratings for their only season. Like kinescopes, it preserved a live performance on film; unlike kinescopes , the film was of higher quality and comparable to a motion picture. A decade later, he aired the half-hour Honeymooners in syndicated reruns that began to build a loyal and growing audience, making the show a television icon. Its popularity was such that in 2000 a life-sized statue of Jackie Gleason, in uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, was installed outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. The Honeymooners first was featured on Cavalcade of Stars on October 5, 1951, with Carney in a guest appearance as a cop and character actress Pert Kelton as Alice.
It changed hands two more times before being sold to its current owner, a now-retired orthodontist, for $150,000 in 1976. Gleason designed the two-bedroom, 3,950-square-foot home himself at the height of his TV series’ popularity. It took five years and $650,000 to build and was finished in 1959. The property includes two other homes that he used as a refuge from his work, too. In 1974, Marilyn Taylor encountered Gleason again when she moved to the Miami area to be near her sister June, whose dancers had starred on Gleason's shows for many years. In September 1974, Gleason filed for divorce from McKittrick .
Early life
An incredible curved marble stairway leads to the upper level, and huge windows give the entire home a light, airy feel.
The network had cancelled a mainstay variety show hosted by Red Skelton and would cancel The Ed Sullivan Show in 1971 because they had become too expensive to produce and attracted, in the executives' opinion, too old an audience. Gleason simply stopped doing the show in 1970 and left CBS when his contract expired. Gleason's first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts , and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each. At one point, Gleason held the record for charting the most number-one albums on the Billboard 200 without charting any hits on the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
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Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in 1961's The Hustler (co-starring with Paul Newman) and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series from 1977 to 1983 (co-starring Burt Reynolds). “One-hundred yards from ‘Mother’ is a cottage (aka ‘Space Ship’) with a kitchen, fireplace, and bath, all circular by design,” Payson said. The five-bedroom, four-full-baths and two-half-bath home sits on almost eight and a half acres in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by trees — and the three buildings on the property are built to take advantage of every single spectacular view.
In 1985, three decades after the "Classic 39" began filming, Gleason revealed he had carefully preserved kinescopes of his live 1950s programs in a vault for future use . These "lost episodes" were initially previewed at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, aired on the Showtime cable network in 1985, and later were added to the Honeymooners syndication package. Some of them include earlier versions of plot lines later used in the 'classic 39' episodes. One had all Gleason's best-known characters featured in and outside of the Kramden apartment. The storyline involved a wild Christmas party hosted by Reginald Van Gleason up the block from the Kramdens' building at Joe the Bartender's place.
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Gleason played a world-weary army sergeant in Soldier in the Rain , in which he received top billing over Steve McQueen. When Gleason moved to CBS, Kelton was left behind; her name had been published in Red Channels, a book that listed and described reputed communists in television and radio, and the network did not want to hire her. Gleason reluctantly let her leave the cast, with a cover story for the media that she had "heart trouble". Meadows wrote in her memoir that she slipped back to audition again and frumped herself up to convince Gleason that she could handle the role of a frustrated working-class wife. Rounding out the cast, Joyce Randolph played Trixie, Ed Norton's wife.
Although the movie was critically panned, Gleason and Pryor's performances were praised. His last film performance was opposite Tom Hanks in the Garry Marshall-directed Nothing in Common , a success both critically and financially. Years later, when interviewed by Larry King, Reynolds said he agreed to do the movie only if the studio hired Jackie Gleason to play the part of Sheriff Buford T. Justice (the name of a real Florida highway patrolman, who knew Reynolds' father). Reynolds said that director Hal Needham gave Gleason free rein to ad-lib a great deal of his dialog and make suggestions for the film; the scene at the "Choke and Puke" was Gleason's idea.
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Elaine Stritch had played the role as a tall and attractive blonde in the first sketch but was quickly replaced by Randolph. Comedy writer Leonard Stern always felt The Honeymooners was more than sketch material and persuaded Gleason to make it into a full-hour-long episode. Gleason's most popular character by far was blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden. Largely drawn from Gleason's harsh Brooklyn childhood, these sketches became known as The Honeymooners. Gleason was 19 when his mother died in 1935 of sepsis from a large neck carbuncle that young Jackie had tried to lance.
By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series of popular and best-selling albums with his orchestra for Capitol Records. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his instrumental compositions include "Melancholy Serenade", "Glamour", "Lover's Rhapsody", "On the Beach" and "To a Sleeping Beauty", among numerous others. So I'm figuring that if Gable needs that kinda help, then a guy in Canarsie has gotta be dyin' for something like this. In the 1930s, before he ever really made it even in small-time venues, he was a bartender at a bar in Newark, NJ, called the Blue Mirror. This was also a time when he actually lived and slept in the back room with the empty bottles, etc. Naturally, of course, it was across the street from a pool hall that he patronized in the afternoons after he was finished cleaning up the Blue Mirror.
Of course, it is quite a decision to make when you're 61 years old. How do you know if you're physically able to stand up under it? And with all the work I have coming up, if anything had happened, God forbid, it would have been a disaster. But the main thing was to get the best possible doctor to do the job, and I did. Prone to excess with wine, women, song and work, a lifestyle that often led to exhaustion.
In a 1985 interview, Gleason related some of his characters to his youth in Brooklyn. The Mr. Dennehy whom Joe the Bartender greets is a tribute to Gleason's first love, Julie Dennehy. The character of The Poor Soul was drawn from an assistant manager of an outdoor theater he frequented. Gleason's first significant recognition as an entertainer came on Broadway when he appeared in the hit musical Follow the Girls .
Halford wanted to marry, but Gleason was not ready to settle down. One evening when Gleason went onstage at the Club Miami in Newark, New Jersey, he saw Halford in the front row with a date. At the end of his show, Gleason went to the table and proposed to Halford in front of her date. June Taylor Dancers with Gleason on one of his television specials. Nearly all of Gleason's albums have been reissued on compact disc.
Former NFL linebacker Mike Henry played his dimwitted son, Junior Justice. Gleason's gruff and frustrated demeanor and lines such as "I'm gonna barbecue yo' ass in molasses!" made the first Bandit movie a hit. Gleason wrote, produced and starred in Gigot , in which he played a poor, mute janitor who befriended and rescued a prostitute and her small daughter.
Gleason House
The house filled with Gleason's personal furnishings, including a billfish that he caught and a meat slicer that he used for his home-cooked hams. It also contains a massive library with impressive law and reference books that Gleason never read, as well as a billiard room designed by famous pool shark Willie Mosconi, who was a technical advisor on Gleason's 1961 film "The Hustler." That, of course, was a catchphrase of the larger-than-life actor, comedian and composer who designed and built a bucolic refuge in northern Westchester County in the 1950s while at the height of his fame. Jackie Gleason needed no help to portray the real-life Minnesota Fats, the cutthroat pool shark he portrayed in the 1961 film who toyed with opponents before making decisive trick shots to collect from local hustlers.
His output spans some 20-plus singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and over 40 CDs. The 50-foot-wide main house was custom-made by a ship builder in an airplane hangar, then transported to Gleason’s property. The unique, round structure has no right angles, and along with the guest house there are five bedrooms, six baths, a library, an entertainment space, a curved kitchen and more. Gleason's dough is made with only flour, water, starter and salt. The dough is slowly proofed with our house sourdough starter - not packaged bread yeast - to give the final product exceptional texture and depth of flavor.
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