Multiple Honeybees

[Joeytrom]

Gillis's wife Honeybee was a minor character on the Gleason Riley, played by Maxine Simone. On the Bendix version, three actresses played her.

Veda Ann Borg and Marie Brown played Honeybee the first two seasons, when she was still considered a minor character) and Gloria Blondell played her for the last two.

Veda Ann Borg and Marie Brown gave Honeybee more of an edge while Gloria Blondell was somewhat toned down.

Was there any explanation for the change in actresses?

[TV_on_the_Porch]

Gloria Blondell played Honeybee for five full seasons. The tiny handful of episodes in which either Marie Brown or Veda Ann Borg played the role were all from early 1953, during the show's first season (it premiered in January).







Correction: The Honeybee character didn't appear in any 4th season episodes. Nevertheless, Gloria Blondell played the part from 1953-1958.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...creator/producer Irving Brecher envisioned Honeybee Gillis as a somewhat minor character who didn't appear in every episode (when she did, Shirley Mitchell portrayed her). When he produced the first TV version starring Jackie Gleason in 1949-'50, he adapted scripts from the radio show, and most of them didn't involve Honeybee; when they did, Maxine Semon played her, in only three of the 26 episodes filmed.

When NBC produced the second series starring William Bendix [under a 15 year licensing deal with Brecher, who was busy with other projects] at the beginning of 1953, they initially adapted some of the earlier Bendix radio scripts as well, and Honeybee didn't appear in most of those, either. So, they got Veda Ann Borg and Marie Brown to play her in different episodes. But producer Tom McKnight apparently wanted Honeybee to appear in more episodes for the second season, as he likely envisioned more of a closer friendship between the Rileys and the Gillises (a la the Ricardos and Mertzes on "I LOVE LUCY", no doubt). So, he got Gloria Blondell [Joan's sister] to play Honeybee, and the chemistry worked. However, Tom D'Andrea and Gloria were "absent" from the series during the 1955-'56 season {perhaps a snag in contract negotiations?}, and George O'Hanlon & Florence Sundstrom "replaced" them as Calvin and Belle Dudley, a neighboring couple not unlike the Gilli ses. But viewers apparently didn't embrace them enough, and the show's ratings slid a bit. So the Gillises returned in the fall of 1956, and stayed until the series ended in 1958.

[TV_on_the_Porch]

I always assumed the 1955-56 season being Gillis-less was directly related to Tom D'Andrea taking a summer job in 1955, starring opposite Hal March in the live series The Soldiers. But how he ended up doing that instead of Riley...who knows, perhaps it was a contractual issue.