Reviews: Additional Sketches & Commercials (Part 4) & New Featurettes (Part 1):

[Frank Gannucci]

Reviews: Additional Sketches & Commercials (Part 4) & New Featurettes (Part 1):

“Audrey Meadows Chesterfield Commercial From The Ray Anthony Show” (1956):

Ray Anthony appears. Ray: “Meet two of TV’s charming young personalities. First here’s Robin Chandler.” Apparently, Robin is working in an office despite being a TV personality.” Ray: “Here is Audrey Meadows.” Audrey is watering her flowers.” A still of old Chesterfield cigarettes are shown in regular and king-size. Yes, this is a cigarette commercial. Audrey says she likes the king-size pack. In this commercial, she is using what apparently is her real voice which was different than her Alice Kramden voice. Her real voice was much deeper. She says that she loves Chesterfield. Cut to Robin who says she loves the pack as well as other things about Chesterfield. She prefers the regular size. Cut to Ray Anthony who has got a box of Chesterfield king-sized cigarettes and a box of Chesterfield regular size. According to Ray, they can be sold at a low price. I am sure that said low price is higher today. Ray: “Chesterfield works best for you.”

New Featurettes: "Lost Episodes Story":

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 episodes 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? That is not true. They weren't expanded.

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.

Credit I think goes to (the original) Bill's 'Mooners Archives, eBay.com, tv.com, Honeymooners Lost Episodes Book, tvguide.com, honeymooners.net, Honeymooners Box Set booklet Honeymooners Lost Episodes DVD booklet, Wikipedia.org, Yahoo Group You're A Riot! & Amazon.com.