Jackie Gleason Television Treasures 70th Anniversary Collection REVIEW

[ChrisTV]

Here is a recap of what is featured on the new MPI DVD release:
Jackie Gleason Television Treasures 70th Anniversary Collection available as of May 1, 2022.

Disc 1:

1) "The Jackie Gleason Show" - January 17, 1953:
A complete show from beginning to end with all intact commercials.
Gleason Monologue.
Eddie Hanley 'Sleepy Time Gal' bit.
Gleason’s New Trends Magazine presents Live Schick Electric Shavers commercial.
Honeymooners Lost Episode: ‘Alice Plays Cupid’: Alice tries to set up one of Ralph’s supervisors with a friend of hers. Ralph and his big mouth get him in trouble. Guest George Petrie.
Live Ipana commercial #1.
Peggy Lee sings 'Louisville Lou’ & ‘When I Fall In Love.”
Live ’Pacquins Silk and Satin’ commercial.
CBS station break.
Charlie Bratton the Loudmouth: Charlie & Clem Finch meet the wrong Mr. Underwood at a the wrong hotel.
Gleason stretches the introduction (because the stagehands aren’t ready) of The June Taylor Dancers in ’The Bell of the Ball.’
Live Ipana commercial #2.
Reggie Van Gleason: ’The Strange Case of Mrs. Snowball’s Emerald.’
Jackie Gleason - Goodnight.

2) Bonus sketch: Reggie Van Gleason III ‘Team Wrestling’ sketch from Nov. 10, 1956.

3) Best of Jackie Gleason’s American Scene Magazine:
Opening June Taylor Dancers & Monologue - March 21, 1964.
Reggie Van Gleason ‘Flea Circus’ sketch - November 2, 1963.
The Poor Soul wrist watch commercial - November 2, 1963.
'The Matador’ sketch - Jan 16, 1965
Rum Dum 'The Grocery Store’ - December 8, 1962.
Joe The Bartender - February 27, 1963.
“Wow! Wow!’ sketch - April 11, 1964.
Reggie Van Gleason ‘Alligator Wrestling’ - January 30, 1965.
Jackie Gleason - Goodnight.

Disc 2:

4) The Jackie Gleason Special: ‘The Big Sell’ - October 9, 1960
‘The Honeymooners’: ‘Investing In The Future’

Best of 'Jackie Gleason’s American Scene Magazine' - 'The Honeymooners':
5) 'Two Below’ - September 29, 1962.
Ralph convinces Ed to get more involved in civil defense and spend a week in the basement instead of vacationing with Alice & Trixie in Atlantic City.

6) ’TV Game of the Week’ - October 20, 1962.
Ralph finally gives in and buys a television set and he & Norton try to watch a football game.

7) ’The Adoption’ - January 8, 1966.
Anxious to adopt a baby, Ralph and Alice go to great lengths to impress the adoption agency - even passing off expensive borrowed furniture as their own.

Best of The Jackie Gleason Show 1966-1970 - The Honeymooners:
8) 'Six Months To Live’ - November 23, 1968
9) 'Alice’s Birthday’ - December 7, 1968
10) ‘Lawsuit’ - January 4, 1969
11) 'Hot Tip’ - February 8, 1969
12) 'The New Bowling Ball' - March 22, 1969
13) 'Norton Moves In’ - April 5, 1969
14) 'The New Manager’ - April 19, 1969
Jackie Gleason - Goodnight.
Note: The 7 sketches above are slightly rewritten remakes of Lost Episodes from 1952-1953.

15) Bonus clip: Ed Norton presents Jackie Gleason with an award and with guest Gene Kelly, all 3 dance a soft shoe. February 25, 1967.

16) Bonus clip: ’The Great Gleason' from The Steve Lawrence Show. September 20, 1965.

17) Special: 'Jackie Gleason: Genius at Work.’ - January 29, 2008.
Most of the sketches have never before been available or even viewed since their original live broadcasts in the 1950s.

OPINION: Regarding Disc #1: We get a complete 1953 Gleason show for the first time and it is a delight. And we get a never before released bonus sketch from 1956 and never before seen sketches from "American Scene Magazine. This disc is worth the price alone.

Disc 2 however is a bit of a disappointment. Yes we finally get the 3 'American Scene Magazine' Honeymooners sketches and 'The Big Sell' sketch.
The bad news comes with the video transfers. The transfers are poor. Transfer lines are visible many times on disc 2. This occurs when the burn speed to the disc is set to the fastest burn, most likely 8x or 16x, if it were a slower burn the lines would be less visible. The worst occurs in 'The Big Sell'.
Because this is DVD, the quality and sharpness really suffers.
This set should have been released on Blu Ray. No exception.

The other disappointment comes with the inclusion of the 'Genius at Work' Special & the 7 Color Honeymooners.
These have already been released on DVD.
The 7 Color Honeymooners are on The Jackie Gleason Show In Color Time Life DVD set. And the 'Genius at Work' special on PBS DVD.

This is 3 hours+ of disc space that could have been used for bringing additional
never before seen material. This has been a problem in the past with MPI DVDs and it continues here.

Also, Sheila MacRae is just plain boring as Alice and so over the top in these 7 sketches.

NOTE: It is worth the purchase for disc 1. And with high sales should bring future releases.

[ChrisTV]

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[Frank Gannucci]

Chris, thanks for the review.

Too bad this disc set doesn’t have the Incredible World of Ed Norton, yeah, I know. The sketch is about Art and not Jackie but still.

Also, that “stage hands aren’t ready” scene is also on Jackie Gleason’s Honeybloopers. An MPI home video release.

[ChrisTV]

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[ChrisTV]

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[Gleasonclown]

It would be great if they did a Jackie Gleason “Cast of Character's” compilation from American Scene Magazine episode's. The source material looked pretty decent in the the ones presented on this DVD. There are some funny Reggie, Poor Soul, Rum Dum and Joe the Bartender bits in those years. Even some of the more obscure characters like WowWow, Pedro the Mexican and Agnes & Arthur scenes.

The Poor Soul Christmas episode would be a great bonus feature.

[Frank Gannucci]

I just watched the Adoption episode and I find it funny how MPI got a copy of the episode where during the end credits, you hear a CBS announcer plug Andy Griffith.

The CBS FOX Honeymooners Classic 39 Blu-ray version doesn’t have any plug during the end credits. Neither did TV Land’s copy (I have a copy of The Adoption recorded off of Tv Land in 2000 and the network had no announcement over the credits.)

Makes what MPI did very amateurish.

[Benno123]

I have been watching random shows in the discs and as blah Sheila MacRae is I am enjoying these short sketches again since the Time Life release.

I did have to sign in to ask how MPI is amateur when it comes to the 1966 episode. This is the closest as-aired version out there, audio splice or not, and the Andy Griffith announcement was great. I would rather receive a complete show, or as close to air show as possible, with something added of I have to repurchase something I already have several times over.

[Frank Gannucci]

Originally Posted by Benno123

I have been watching random shows in the discs and as blah Sheila MacRae is I am enjoying these short sketches again since the Time Life release.

I did have to sign in to ask how MPI is amateur when it comes to the 1966 episode. This is the closest as-aired version out there, audio splice or not, and the Andy Griffith announcement was great. I would rather receive a complete show, or as close to air show as possible, with something added of I have to repurchase something I already have several times over.

Maybe I was too harsh but The reason why I said amateurish was that well it seems like the only copy that MPI could get. Yes, I realize it’s more complete than TV Lands copy. (TV Land edited out the sponsor plugs but kept the sketch intact). CBS FOX one I think is just as complete as MPIs (unless I’m mistaken) and it doesn’t have that plug. I remember people praising stations when they show closing credits intact with no advertisements and I believe that they love it when home videos include them with no advertisements.

So yeah considering that MPIs copy is more uncut, maybe I was too harsh and truth be told I didn’t mind the CBS plug that much.

[Marshall]

Thanks ChrisTV for the in depth info, screen grabs, etc. of this double DVD Gleason set. I'm late with this, but last week, I wrote a web article/review on The Jackie Gleason Television Treasures set. The link is below.

I'd still like to see a set made up of the edited half hour American Scene Magazine episodes that ran in the 1980's. I know music licensing might make a lot of Frank Fontaine (Crazy Guggenheim)'s singing be restricted. But, with the rest, Gleason composed the incidental music, so there might not be a problem there.

It's interesting, I thought a few of the ASM segments ran a little long in the DVD. Just my opinion. Also, the Steve Lawrence Show aired the footage of The Great Gleason Express train ride(from 1964) to Miami Beach a year after it had taken place. The Steve Lawrence Show wasn't on air in 1964, but with Gleason's popularity, I guess it didn't matter that the event was a year old already.

Marshall

Jackie Gleason Television Treasures: 70th Anniversary Collection review:
https://discover.hubpages.com/entert...ion-DVD-Review

[cloggedmind]

ChrisTV wrote:
"The transfers are poor. Transfer lines are visible many times on disc 2. This occurs when the burn speed to the disc is set to the fastest burn, most likely 8x or 16x, if it were a slower burn the lines would be less visible. The worst occurs in 'The Big Sell'."

Good review and recap, but this bit about the burn speed is, well, complete and utter fiction. The aberrations in the picture either result from a damaged source that has not been adequately processed to remove the issues, or just a sloppy transfer (software re-encoding, perhaps. Or, I suspect edge enhancement and artificial sharpening, based on all the vertical halo-ing in the image). Burn speed does not apply to stamped discs, nor would it cause "lines". An improperly burned disc could produce no worse than jitter (unstable, glitchy playback), image stutter or total playback failure had this been a dvd-r or comparable MOD title.

Further in the actual technical realm, the short color sketches rehashed here from the Time-Life discs suffer from too much audio noise reduction, commonly known as "No-Noising". Here, the noise reduction algorithm is applied too heavily and causes the audio to artificially rise and dip around dialogue and loud sounds, creating a sort of roar-of-the-tide sound-- like waves (of sound) crashing in and out. This is not present on the Time-Life copies.

I think the disc set is neat that it has all this material collected, but is a lost opportunity to finally release (or at least mention or acknowledge) The Incredible World of Ed Norton, to showcase more of The American Scene show bits, or to go all out and have the whole "Big Sell" programme and/or others WITH network voiceovers and interstitials (like, didn't the bootleg version of "The Big Sell" begin with something like a pre-empting of Ron Reagan Theater or something, then ends with Jack Benny selling US Bonds?). Neat to see. Like the Time-Life shows that start with the CBS Color intro.

Probably asking too much to have Gleason's in-character "Great Entertainer" GE commercials from circa '73 added as bonus features, as well? You know, the ones cut from the previous release of the "Women's Lib" special, along with the Reggie Van Gleason sketch and the closing dance number!

Still any of The Great One is great and, well, let's hear it for MPI's determination and effort to gather the materials, and for the supplemental, wide world of bootlegs!

[Marshall]

Originally Posted by cloggedmind

ChrisTV wrote:
"The transfers are poor. Transfer lines are visible many times on disc 2. This occurs when the burn speed to the disc is set to the fastest burn, most likely 8x or 16x, if it were a slower burn the lines would be less visible. The worst occurs in 'The Big Sell'."

Good review and recap, but this bit about the burn speed is, well, complete and utter fiction. The aberrations in the picture either result from a damaged source that has not been adequately processed to remove the issues, or just a sloppy transfer (software re-encoding, perhaps. Or, I suspect edge enhancement and artificial sharpening, based on all the vertical halo-ing in the image). Burn speed does not apply to stamped discs, nor would it cause "lines". An improperly burned disc could produce no worse than jitter (unstable, glitchy playback), image stutter or total playback failure had this been a dvd-r or comparable MOD title.

Further in the actual technical realm, the short color sketches rehashed here from the Time-Life discs suffer from too much audio noise reduction, commonly known as "No-Noising". Here, the noise reduction algorithm is applied too heavily and causes the audio to artificially rise and dip around dialogue and loud sounds, creating a sort of roar-of-the-tide sound-- like waves (of sound) crashing in and out. This is not present on the Time-Life copies.

I think the disc set is neat that it has all this material collected, but is a lost opportunity to finally release (or at least mention or acknowledge) The Incredible World of Ed Norton, to showcase more of The American Scene show bits, or to go all out and have the whole "Big Sell" programme and/or others WITH network voiceovers and interstitials (like, didn't the bootleg version of "The Big Sell" begin with something like a pre-empting of Ron Reagan Theater or something, then ends with Jack Benny selling US Bonds?). Neat to see. Like the Time-Life shows that start with the CBS Color intro.

Probably asking too much to have Gleason's in-character "Great Entertainer" GE commercials from circa '73 added as bonus features, as well? You know, the ones cut from the previous release of the "Women's Lib" special, along with the Reggie Van Gleason sketch and the closing dance number!

Still any of The Great One is great and, well, let's hear it for MPI's determination and effort to gather the materials, and for the supplemental, wide world of bootlegs!

cloggedmind,
Thanks for am informative reply here, and for the kind words regarding the review.

I'm with you in that I like to see the interstitials and announcer voiceovers, etc. from the Gleason shows. For example, the Classic 39 Blu-ray release has the sponsor material segments available for some of the episodes, which I enjoyed.

I'm glad, too, that I have a few hours on disc of those American Scene Magazine half hour edited shows from the 80's, and would have liked to have seen more of that in the TV Treasures discs.

One of the GE TV commercials from 1973 is on YouTube, and Jackie's face is pretty fuzzy there, so I'm guessing it's a few generations from the source.

I'd also like to see the full The Big Sell program you mention. If you have a helpful hint on where to find it, please send ne a PM and let me know.

Thanks again,
Marshall

[Marshall]

Originally Posted by cloggedmind

ChrisTV wrote:
"The transfers are poor. Transfer lines are visible many times on disc 2. This occurs when the burn speed to the disc is set to the fastest burn, most likely 8x or 16x, if it were a slower burn the lines would be less visible. The worst occurs in 'The Big Sell'."

Good review and recap, but this bit about the burn speed is, well, complete and utter fiction. The aberrations in the picture either result from a damaged source that has not been adequately processed to remove the issues, or just a sloppy transfer (software re-encoding, perhaps. Or, I suspect edge enhancement and artificial sharpening, based on all the vertical halo-ing in the image). Burn speed does not apply to stamped discs, nor would it cause "lines". An improperly burned disc could produce no worse than jitter (unstable, glitchy playback), image stutter or total playback failure had this been a dvd-r or comparable MOD title.

Further in the actual technical realm, the short color sketches rehashed here from the Time-Life discs suffer from too much audio noise reduction, commonly known as "No-Noising". Here, the noise reduction algorithm is applied too heavily and causes the audio to artificially rise and dip around dialogue and loud sounds, creating a sort of roar-of-the-tide sound-- like waves (of sound) crashing in and out. This is not present on the Time-Life copies.

I think the disc set is neat that it has all this material collected, but is a lost opportunity to finally release (or at least mention or acknowledge) The Incredible World of Ed Norton, to showcase more of The American Scene show bits, or to go all out and have the whole "Big Sell" programme and/or others WITH network voiceovers and interstitials (like, didn't the bootleg version of "The Big Sell" begin with something like a pre-empting of Ron Reagan Theater or something, then ends with Jack Benny selling US Bonds?). Neat to see. Like the Time-Life shows that start with the CBS Color intro.

Probably asking too much to have Gleason's in-character "Great Entertainer" GE commercials from circa '73 added as bonus features, as well? You know, the ones cut from the previous release of the "Women's Lib" special, along with the Reggie Van Gleason sketch and the closing dance number!

Still any of The Great One is great and, well, let's hear it for MPI's determination and effort to gather the materials, and for the supplemental, wide world of bootlegs!

cloggedmind,
Thank you so much for the two shows. I appreciate it. The show with The Big Sell looks like a lot of fun with the Speidel commercials, Phil Harris as the guest, etc.

I'd like to send you a couple of shows in return, but unfortunately, I'm sure you have all of The Gleason and Honeymooners video that's in my collection. I have the official releases of The Color Honeymooners and The Classic 39 on Blu-ray and DVD.I also have about five or six of The American Scene Magazine edited half hour shows. If you're looking for something else TV-wise in particular, let me know.

Thanks again,
Marshall

[cloggedmind]

Originally Posted by Marshall

cloggedmind,
Thank you so much for the two shows. I appreciate it. The show with The Big Sell looks like a lot of fun with the Speidel commercials, Phil Harris as the guest, etc.

I'd like to send you a couple of shows in return, but unfortunately, I'm sure you have all of The Gleason and Honeymooners video that's in my collection. I have the official releases of The Color Honeymooners and The Classic 39 on Blu-ray and DVD.I also have about five or six of The American Scene Magazine edited half hour shows. If you're looking for something else TV-wise in particular, let me know.

Thanks again,
Marshall

You're quite welcome!
There's a few other gems you might be interested in. Although, Mega uploading is throttled for me at the moment (free account, though!) so things move slow, but I'll put up a couple more Gleason rarities in the next few days you might like.

Things I need tv-wise are Holy Grail-type deals and impossible:

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken - The 16mm tv version with the finale recap showing how the stabbed painting was swapped.

Dusty's Trail (Bob Denver) "Danger Stranger" (or any of the other, non-released missing eps of this or Denver's other series, The Good Guys)

Sanford (1980) Uncut hour-long series premiere (features a long-missing scene of Fred's first encounter with Evelyn's maid)

A clean copy of the Gilligan's Island Pilot premiere on TBS with Bob Denver's intro

Gilligan's Island "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk", the colorized version to complete my set (METV had a problem airing this one.. they'd only run the b&w copy)

Any of the Gilligan reunion movies as originally aired (they are out there, with original commercials, and the "Rescue" movie in 2 parts with full credits and re-cap, but folks won't let go of them!)

[Marshall]

Originally Posted by cloggedmind

You're quite welcome!
There's a few other gems you might be interested in. Although, Mega uploading is throttled for me at the moment (free account, though!) so things move slow, but I'll put up a couple more Gleason rarities in the next few days you might like.

Things I need tv-wise are Holy Grail-type deals and impossible:

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken - The 16mm tv version with the finale recap showing how the stabbed painting was swapped.

Dusty's Trail (Bob Denver) "Danger Stranger" (or any of the other, non-released missing eps of this or Denver's other series, The Good Guys)

Sanford (1980) Uncut hour-long series premiere (features a long-missing scene of Fred's first encounter with Evelyn's maid)

A clean copy of the Gilligan's Island Pilot premiere on TBS with Bob Denver's intro

Gilligan's Island "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk", the colorized version to complete my set (METV had a problem airing this one.. they'd only run the b&w copy)

Any of the Gilligan reunion movies as originally aired (they are out there, with original commercials, and the "Rescue" movie in 2 parts with full credits and re-cap, but folks won't let go of them!)

Hi cloggedmind,

I just saw this message, as I haven't been on the Sitcoms Online site this week. Can you please upload these three shows again to the Mega Account? They're all not available now.

Unfortunately, I don't have the shows and movies you're looking for. I do have a few discs of individual 1970's programs with original commercials in "blocks"-Soap, Welcome Back Kotter, Carter Country, Mary Tyler Moore Show last episode (summer repeat but still from its last season),Mork and Mindy, WKRP,etc;1979 game shows disc-High Rollers, Wheel of Fortune. Card Sharks, etc.; and lots of Beatles related videos and some sports (S.F. 49ers, Giants, GS Warriors title wins). If any of these pique your interest, let me know.

Thanks again in advance,
Marshall