Frank Gannucci
02-10-2012, 08:38 AM
Reviews: New Featurettes: "Lost Episodes Story" & "All About Trixie: Joyce Randolph Interview":
DVD: Attached to Radio versions of “Letter To The Boss” & “Love Letter”, “The Norton Interviews”, “Additional Sketches & Commercials” & “Scripts For Missing Episodes.”
The Lost Episodes Story (with TV Historian Dan Wingate):
The opening to “Cavalcade of Stars” is shown. Dan says that the Honeymooners started out as a sketch on DuMont’s “Cavalcade of Stars.” A clip of “Bread” is shown. Dan says that the next season, Jackie moved from DuMont to CBS. A clip of “New Bowling Ball” is shown. Dan says that when Jackie’s show “moved”, he maintained the same format but, the original Alice Kramden, Pert Kelton, had been blacklisted. So Audrey Meadows was eventually hired. Dan says that since it was live TV in the 50s, there was only one way to preserve it was via Kinescope which was having a camera filming a monitor showing something. Dan says that Jackie held onto these master tapes for many years until they were released as The Lost Episodes of The Honeymooners in the mid 80s onto TV and home video. A clip of the 21 Press Conference was shown. The old Showtime logo is can be seen.
Dan: “The Honeymooners lost episode sketches became so popular that they were made into their own series.” The original opening to the Classic 39 version of the Honeymooners is shown. Dan: “Jackie made a deal with Showtime to air the first three seasons and the last season that originally aired on CBS.” A clip of Jackie at the 21 press conference saying: “I’m sick of watching those other Honeymooners.” Microphones from CNN and WCBS can be seen. The WCBS one has their old logo that they used during the late 70s to mid 80s. Dan says that up until the unveiling, people thought all that survived were the Classic 39. Jackie said that they weren’t lost and that he knew where they were all the time. A clip of Jackie saying: “We had the film in an air-conditioned room.” Clips from a master control room playing master prints of the Jackie Gleason show are shown. Jackie: “We said sell them or throw them out. We sold them when there was interest in them.” A clip of the press conference in which Jackie says that the clips were nicely stacked in an air-conditioned room waiting for the phone to ring. A picture of some of the master reels are shown. Dan: “When fans saw the home video versions, he claimed that fans saw alternate versions of sketches that they saw on the Showtime broadcast.” Clips of Ralph Kramden coming in from both versions of “Manager of The Baseball Team” are shown. Dan says that if a sketch was popular, the cast would redo the same sketch. A clip of the 1952 version of “Halloween Party” is shown. Dan says that holiday shows would be performed again in subsequent years. A clip of the 1953 version of “Halloween Party” is shown. Dan says that after the additional lost episodes were unveiled, more kept being discovered. A clip of the ’54 version of “Love Letter” was shown. Dan says that mislabeled film cans and Jackie giving Honeymooners sketches that were cut out of the show and given to cast members were the reason why certain episodes went lost for an extended period of time. Then the material came back into the archive. In 2011, Dan claims that a pervious DuMont sketch was found in the Gleason archive. The sketch was entitled: “Ralph & Alice Get Ready For A Dance Last Night.” Dan: “In ’52, there were a lot of radio listeners that didn’t own TV sets and when Gleason moved networks, an attempt was made to introduce to the radio world, the Honeymooners so they would buy sets and watch the show. CBS didn’t intend to introduce the radio versions of the Honeymooners into a series. However two discs were made and were discovered.
A clip of “Away We Go” is shown. Dan says that after the 39 were made, Jackie says he wanted to make musical episodes about the Kramdens and Nortons taking a trip around the world. Jackie didn’t like rehearsal. A rare color clip of the dress rehearsal of them singing for the “Away We Go” episode is shown. Because there was choreography and singing, the rehearsal was intense. Dan says that the episodes were remade in the 60s and expanded to 10 from 8. Huh?
A clip of Jackie saying that Carney is the greatest comedic-sensitive is shown. Clips FROM “Battle of The Sexes” & “Norton Moves In” are shown. Jackie says that he was laughing when he saw these films for the first time in 30 years. I guess he never viewed them in his spare time. Jackie says that he didn’t like to rehearse so they had one run through in the afternoon and evening and at first, it was shaky but they knew that they had to learn their lines. Jackie says that he kept after Audrey after Audrey almost broke down. Color clips from the color dress rehearsal from “Away We Go” is shown. The audio is lifted from the B&W version.
All About Trixie: Joyce Randolph Interview.
The interview begins with a clip of Jackie on Cavalcade. Joyce: “Jackie had a show. Cavalcade of Stars on DuMont which was on channel 5 in New York.” The station is now WNYW and is owned and operated by Fox. Joyce is shown on camera. She still has red hair. She recalls her auditioning for the role of Trixie. She can’t remember her first little scene that she had with Jackie. She remembers her agent Joe Case as far as having her get the part on the Honeymooners. Joe explained to her the storyline of the show which we all know. Jackie wanted Joyce Randloph for Trixie. According to Joyce, he said: “Get me that serious actress.” Jackie forgot her name. A clip of her Honeymooners debut on the episode entitled “Ring Salesman” were shown. Jackie realized that the Honeymooners was becoming the most important part of the variety show. A clip of the ’51 version Honeymooners Xmas Party was shown when Trixie says what Ed gave to her for Christmas. Joyce says that she was pleased when Audrey came on board in 1952 because she had already knew her. She recalls that she met her on a train from New York to Lousiville and the train got stuck. She always got along with Audrey. A clip of “Cold” episode is shown.
Joyce said that they went in and did the show. No one got told of the background of the characters. Joyce: “You could almost go in and play yourself.” She can’t recall why her character’s name was Trixie but it was hinted several times that her character might have been in burlesque (much like Joyce). A clip of “Songs & Witty Sayings” is shown in which Trixie says: “Are you referring that I was in burlesque?” Joyce: “I often said that my favorite episodes were episodes that I had more than five or six lines and can stand out there for a long time.” She recalls the courtroom scene in “Kramden Vs. Norton.” The courtroom clip is shown. Joyce: “I don’t know if anybody else has it. I hope we found it.” Obviously, she hasn’t watched the episode on home video in any fashion or on the Internet. (The scene is mostly edited if you watch it on TV.) Joyce: “I think that anybody has heard that we didn’t rehearse much because Jackie didn’t believe in a lot of rehearsing. He thought that things should be more spontaneous and didn’t like things that were over-rehearsed because it’s not funny. I guess he was right because we have lasted all these years.” Joyce said that the scripts were brought to their apartments on Thursday. They all reported to the office on Friday. They did a run-through with Jack Hurdle who took Jackie’s place. They never saw Jackie until it was almost show time. They got the changes that Jackie made to the script. They would all go to their homes and learn it. They reported to the office on Saturday at 11am. After rehearsing, they went on live at 8p. A clip of the 1953 version of “Vacation At Fred’s Landing” is shown. Joyce said that since comedy writing, an idea would be reworked as much as a few times with minor changes. She is referring to Jackie Gleason making more than one version of Honeymooners episodes. Now a clip of the ’54 version of “Vacation At Fred’s Landing” is shown. It’s the same dialogue as the other clip.
Joyce: “Audrey was very clever. She had long scenes with Jackie. She memorized everything.” I think that is why she was given the nickname “The Rock.” Joyce: “If something went wrong, Jackie said ad-lib in character. That is what happened when he worked with Art.” A clip of Jackie trying to button his open fly from “Hot Tips” is shown. Ralph: “You know something? There comes a time when a man may need a lucky jacket like that.” Joyce remembers the fact that fat jokes were a part of the show. A clip of “Ralph’s Diet” is shown where Alice says: “Look at the stomach.” Ralph: “That is my stomach.” Alice: “What is it?” Ralph: “It happens to be a very low chest.” Joyce: “He did go on diets at times but he was funnier when he was fat.” A clip from the Raccoons having dessert from “A Weighty Problem” is shown. Joyce remembers the times that George Petrie was on the show and that he played a bunch of different characters and changed his appearance at times. Joyce said that Jackie knew that George was very fast with a comeback and that he could pick things from the script and correct it perhaps. He could also ad-lib. Jackie wanted that guy on the show. A clip of “Ralph’s Sweet Tooth” is shown as well as “Brother-In-Law.”
Joyce: “We worked in front of an audience so that affected our delivery. We had to wait for laughs. I don’t think we had that many laughs in my parts. I had a few. Audrey usually has to set up the plot in the beginning of the show.” A clip of Alice & Trixie rehearsing from “Suspense” is shown. Joyce: “We would try to make it as interesting as possible. Jackie would come on and I would leave.” A clip of “Cupid” is shown. The part that begins when Trixie leaves just before Ralph comes in with flowers. Joyce says that the Jackie Gleason show in ’52 was a wonderful show with all the dancers and everything. Once and a while, a guest. Once and a while, a singer. The Honeymooners back then were only like eight minutes. Then it got longer and longer because the audience demanded it. In ’55, Buick asked CBS to have our own show. We did it in the old, now demolished, Adelphi theater in New York. We filmed, I used the term filmed loosely because we were live.” A picture of the Raccoon lodge scene from “Something Fishy” is shown. We did the show very quickly. One on Tuesday and one on Friday every week.” Wow! I always thought they did one show weekly throughout the TV season. Joyce: “It was tough on Jackie, Art & Audrey but it was very popular.” It was? I always thought that the show was a bomb in the ratings when they first aired. Joyce: “Buick wanted another season. Jackie said no. We don’t have enough good scripts. We are going back to our own variety show.” A clip of Jack Lescoulie is shown introducing us to the Honeymooners musical sketch “Curse of The Kramdens” is shown.
Joyce said that the musical numbers that they did in the ’56-’57 season were great fun. A clip of them singing from “Curse of The Kramdens” is shown. Joyce: “We had original songs to learn. It was great. It was exciting. We were ‘visiting’ all these countries. Joyce: “I think that Jackie was tired of doing the Honeymooners and wanted to be a movie star which he did become but it was to get new scripts that were funny enough. That’s why he ended it in 1957. It was sad. But as we know now, it went on and on and on due to reruns and modern technology which makes me very happy too. A clip of the girls playing pool from “Kramden Vs. Norton” is shown. Joyce: “We couldn’t see ourselves performing at first but years later, it was a revelation when we could. I certainly enjoyed it. By this time, I had a husband and a son who enjoyed it so that was some of my fondest memories. A clip of Jackie introducing the cast at the end of one of the Jackie Gleason shows is shown. It’s the one that had “Kramden Vs. Norton”. (I can tell by the attire that the actors wore.) That’s the end. The only disappointment about the interview was that Joyce didn’t talk about Art Carney too much. I was expecting her too due to what I read beforehand. Oh well.
DVD: Attached to Radio versions of “Letter To The Boss” & “Love Letter”, “The Norton Interviews”, “Additional Sketches & Commercials” & “Scripts For Missing Episodes.”
The Lost Episodes Story (with TV Historian Dan Wingate):
The opening to “Cavalcade of Stars” is shown. Dan says that the Honeymooners started out as a sketch on DuMont’s “Cavalcade of Stars.” A clip of “Bread” is shown. Dan says that the next season, Jackie moved from DuMont to CBS. A clip of “New Bowling Ball” is shown. Dan says that when Jackie’s show “moved”, he maintained the same format but, the original Alice Kramden, Pert Kelton, had been blacklisted. So Audrey Meadows was eventually hired. Dan says that since it was live TV in the 50s, there was only one way to preserve it was via Kinescope which was having a camera filming a monitor showing something. Dan says that Jackie held onto these master tapes for many years until they were released as The Lost Episodes of The Honeymooners in the mid 80s onto TV and home video. A clip of the 21 Press Conference was shown. The old Showtime logo is can be seen.
Dan: “The Honeymooners lost episode sketches became so popular that they were made into their own series.” The original opening to the Classic 39 version of the Honeymooners is shown. Dan: “Jackie made a deal with Showtime to air the first three seasons and the last season that originally aired on CBS.” A clip of Jackie at the 21 press conference saying: “I’m sick of watching those other Honeymooners.” Microphones from CNN and WCBS can be seen. The WCBS one has their old logo that they used during the late 70s to mid 80s. Dan says that up until the unveiling, people thought all that survived were the Classic 39. Jackie said that they weren’t lost and that he knew where they were all the time. A clip of Jackie saying: “We had the film in an air-conditioned room.” Clips from a master control room playing master prints of the Jackie Gleason show are shown. Jackie: “We said sell them or throw them out. We sold them when there was interest in them.” A clip of the press conference in which Jackie says that the clips were nicely stacked in an air-conditioned room waiting for the phone to ring. A picture of some of the master reels are shown. Dan: “When fans saw the home video versions, he claimed that fans saw alternate versions of sketches that they saw on the Showtime broadcast.” Clips of Ralph Kramden coming in from both versions of “Manager of The Baseball Team” are shown. Dan says that if a sketch was popular, the cast would redo the same sketch. A clip of the 1952 version of “Halloween Party” is shown. Dan says that holiday shows would be performed again in subsequent years. A clip of the 1953 version of “Halloween Party” is shown. Dan says that after the additional lost episodes were unveiled, more kept being discovered. A clip of the ’54 version of “Love Letter” was shown. Dan says that mislabeled film cans and Jackie giving Honeymooners sketches that were cut out of the show and given to cast members were the reason why certain episodes went lost for an extended period of time. Then the material came back into the archive. In 2011, Dan claims that a pervious DuMont sketch was found in the Gleason archive. The sketch was entitled: “Ralph & Alice Get Ready For A Dance Last Night.” Dan: “In ’52, there were a lot of radio listeners that didn’t own TV sets and when Gleason moved networks, an attempt was made to introduce to the radio world, the Honeymooners so they would buy sets and watch the show. CBS didn’t intend to introduce the radio versions of the Honeymooners into a series. However two discs were made and were discovered.
A clip of “Away We Go” is shown. Dan says that after the 39 were made, Jackie says he wanted to make musical episodes about the Kramdens and Nortons taking a trip around the world. Jackie didn’t like rehearsal. A rare color clip of the dress rehearsal of them singing for the “Away We Go” episode is shown. Because there was choreography and singing, the rehearsal was intense. Dan says that the episodes were remade in the 60s and expanded to 10 from 8. Huh?
A clip of Jackie saying that Carney is the greatest comedic-sensitive is shown. Clips FROM “Battle of The Sexes” & “Norton Moves In” are shown. Jackie says that he was laughing when he saw these films for the first time in 30 years. I guess he never viewed them in his spare time. Jackie says that he didn’t like to rehearse so they had one run through in the afternoon and evening and at first, it was shaky but they knew that they had to learn their lines. Jackie says that he kept after Audrey after Audrey almost broke down. Color clips from the color dress rehearsal from “Away We Go” is shown. The audio is lifted from the B&W version.
All About Trixie: Joyce Randolph Interview.
The interview begins with a clip of Jackie on Cavalcade. Joyce: “Jackie had a show. Cavalcade of Stars on DuMont which was on channel 5 in New York.” The station is now WNYW and is owned and operated by Fox. Joyce is shown on camera. She still has red hair. She recalls her auditioning for the role of Trixie. She can’t remember her first little scene that she had with Jackie. She remembers her agent Joe Case as far as having her get the part on the Honeymooners. Joe explained to her the storyline of the show which we all know. Jackie wanted Joyce Randloph for Trixie. According to Joyce, he said: “Get me that serious actress.” Jackie forgot her name. A clip of her Honeymooners debut on the episode entitled “Ring Salesman” were shown. Jackie realized that the Honeymooners was becoming the most important part of the variety show. A clip of the ’51 version Honeymooners Xmas Party was shown when Trixie says what Ed gave to her for Christmas. Joyce says that she was pleased when Audrey came on board in 1952 because she had already knew her. She recalls that she met her on a train from New York to Lousiville and the train got stuck. She always got along with Audrey. A clip of “Cold” episode is shown.
Joyce said that they went in and did the show. No one got told of the background of the characters. Joyce: “You could almost go in and play yourself.” She can’t recall why her character’s name was Trixie but it was hinted several times that her character might have been in burlesque (much like Joyce). A clip of “Songs & Witty Sayings” is shown in which Trixie says: “Are you referring that I was in burlesque?” Joyce: “I often said that my favorite episodes were episodes that I had more than five or six lines and can stand out there for a long time.” She recalls the courtroom scene in “Kramden Vs. Norton.” The courtroom clip is shown. Joyce: “I don’t know if anybody else has it. I hope we found it.” Obviously, she hasn’t watched the episode on home video in any fashion or on the Internet. (The scene is mostly edited if you watch it on TV.) Joyce: “I think that anybody has heard that we didn’t rehearse much because Jackie didn’t believe in a lot of rehearsing. He thought that things should be more spontaneous and didn’t like things that were over-rehearsed because it’s not funny. I guess he was right because we have lasted all these years.” Joyce said that the scripts were brought to their apartments on Thursday. They all reported to the office on Friday. They did a run-through with Jack Hurdle who took Jackie’s place. They never saw Jackie until it was almost show time. They got the changes that Jackie made to the script. They would all go to their homes and learn it. They reported to the office on Saturday at 11am. After rehearsing, they went on live at 8p. A clip of the 1953 version of “Vacation At Fred’s Landing” is shown. Joyce said that since comedy writing, an idea would be reworked as much as a few times with minor changes. She is referring to Jackie Gleason making more than one version of Honeymooners episodes. Now a clip of the ’54 version of “Vacation At Fred’s Landing” is shown. It’s the same dialogue as the other clip.
Joyce: “Audrey was very clever. She had long scenes with Jackie. She memorized everything.” I think that is why she was given the nickname “The Rock.” Joyce: “If something went wrong, Jackie said ad-lib in character. That is what happened when he worked with Art.” A clip of Jackie trying to button his open fly from “Hot Tips” is shown. Ralph: “You know something? There comes a time when a man may need a lucky jacket like that.” Joyce remembers the fact that fat jokes were a part of the show. A clip of “Ralph’s Diet” is shown where Alice says: “Look at the stomach.” Ralph: “That is my stomach.” Alice: “What is it?” Ralph: “It happens to be a very low chest.” Joyce: “He did go on diets at times but he was funnier when he was fat.” A clip from the Raccoons having dessert from “A Weighty Problem” is shown. Joyce remembers the times that George Petrie was on the show and that he played a bunch of different characters and changed his appearance at times. Joyce said that Jackie knew that George was very fast with a comeback and that he could pick things from the script and correct it perhaps. He could also ad-lib. Jackie wanted that guy on the show. A clip of “Ralph’s Sweet Tooth” is shown as well as “Brother-In-Law.”
Joyce: “We worked in front of an audience so that affected our delivery. We had to wait for laughs. I don’t think we had that many laughs in my parts. I had a few. Audrey usually has to set up the plot in the beginning of the show.” A clip of Alice & Trixie rehearsing from “Suspense” is shown. Joyce: “We would try to make it as interesting as possible. Jackie would come on and I would leave.” A clip of “Cupid” is shown. The part that begins when Trixie leaves just before Ralph comes in with flowers. Joyce says that the Jackie Gleason show in ’52 was a wonderful show with all the dancers and everything. Once and a while, a guest. Once and a while, a singer. The Honeymooners back then were only like eight minutes. Then it got longer and longer because the audience demanded it. In ’55, Buick asked CBS to have our own show. We did it in the old, now demolished, Adelphi theater in New York. We filmed, I used the term filmed loosely because we were live.” A picture of the Raccoon lodge scene from “Something Fishy” is shown. We did the show very quickly. One on Tuesday and one on Friday every week.” Wow! I always thought they did one show weekly throughout the TV season. Joyce: “It was tough on Jackie, Art & Audrey but it was very popular.” It was? I always thought that the show was a bomb in the ratings when they first aired. Joyce: “Buick wanted another season. Jackie said no. We don’t have enough good scripts. We are going back to our own variety show.” A clip of Jack Lescoulie is shown introducing us to the Honeymooners musical sketch “Curse of The Kramdens” is shown.
Joyce said that the musical numbers that they did in the ’56-’57 season were great fun. A clip of them singing from “Curse of The Kramdens” is shown. Joyce: “We had original songs to learn. It was great. It was exciting. We were ‘visiting’ all these countries. Joyce: “I think that Jackie was tired of doing the Honeymooners and wanted to be a movie star which he did become but it was to get new scripts that were funny enough. That’s why he ended it in 1957. It was sad. But as we know now, it went on and on and on due to reruns and modern technology which makes me very happy too. A clip of the girls playing pool from “Kramden Vs. Norton” is shown. Joyce: “We couldn’t see ourselves performing at first but years later, it was a revelation when we could. I certainly enjoyed it. By this time, I had a husband and a son who enjoyed it so that was some of my fondest memories. A clip of Jackie introducing the cast at the end of one of the Jackie Gleason shows is shown. It’s the one that had “Kramden Vs. Norton”. (I can tell by the attire that the actors wore.) That’s the end. The only disappointment about the interview was that Joyce didn’t talk about Art Carney too much. I was expecting her too due to what I read beforehand. Oh well.