Jackie Gleason
Herbert John Gleason, known as Jackie Gleason, was an American comedian, actor, writer, and composer also known as "The Great One". He developed a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, and was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his city bus driver character Ralph Kramden in the television series The Honeymooners. He also developed The Jackie Gleason Show, which maintained high ratings from the mid-1950s through 1970. The series originated in New York City, but filming moved to Miami Beach, Florida, in 1964 after Gleason took up permanent residence there.
Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in 1961's The Hustler and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy from 1977 to 1983.
Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career during the 1950s and 1960s, producing a series of bestselling "mood music" albums. His first album Music for Lovers Only still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts, and his first ten albums sold over a million copies each. His output includes more than 20 singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and more than 40 CDs.
During his career, Gleason received nomination for an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and five Primetime Emmy Awards.
Early life
Gleason was born Herbert Walton Gleason Jr. on February 26, 1916, at 364 Chauncey Street in the Stuyvesant Heights section of Brooklyn. He was later baptized as "John Herbert Gleason" and grew up at 328 Chauncey Street, Apartment 1A. His parents were Herbert Walton "Herb" Gleason, born in New York City to an Irish father and an American mother, and Mae Agnes "Maisie", an Irish immigrant from Farranree, County Cork. Gleason was the younger of two children; his elder brother, Clement, died from complications of meningitis at age 14 in 1919.Gleason remembered Clement and his father having "beautiful handwriting". He watched his father work at the family's kitchen table, writing insurance policies in the evenings. On the night of December 14, 1925, Gleason's father disposed of any family photos in which he appeared; just after noon on December 15, he collected his hat, coat, and paycheck, and permanently left his family and job at the insurance company. Once it became evident that he was not coming back, Mae went to work as a subway attendant for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation.
After his father abandoned the family, young Gleason began hanging around with a local gang, hustling pool. He attended P.S. 73 Elementary School in Brooklyn, John Adams High School in Queens, and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn. Gleason became interested in performing after being part of a class play; he quit school before graduating and got a job that paid $4per night as master of ceremonies at a theater. Other jobs he held at that time included pool hall worker, stunt driver, and carnival barker. Gleason and his friends made the rounds of the local theaters; he put an act together with one of his friends, and the pair performed on an amateur night at the Halsey Theater, where Gleason replaced his friend Sammy Birch as master of ceremonies. He performed the same duties twice a week at the Folly Theater.
Gleason was 19 when his mother died in 1935 from complications of sepsis from a large neck carbuncle that young Jackie had tried to lance. He had nowhere to go and 36 cents to his name. The family of his first girlfriend, Julie Dennehy, offered to take him in; Gleason, however, was headstrong and insisted that he was going into the heart of the city. His friend Birch made room for him in the hotel room he shared with another comedian. Birch also told him of a week-long gig in Reading, Pennsylvania, which would pay $19—more money than Gleason could imagine. The booking agent advanced his bus fare for the trip against his salary, granting Gleason his first job as a professional comedian. Following this, he would always have regular work in small clubs.
Career
Gleason worked his way up to larger clubs in Manhattan, first Leon and Eddie's and then Jack White's madcap Club 18, where insulting the patrons was the order of the day. Gleason greeted noted skater Sonja Henie by handing her an ice cube and saying, "Okay, now do something.""He has an uncanny instinct for hauling willing laughs from paying guests," reported a newspaper columnist in 1941. "His unsmiling, watchful countenance reminds one of a portly Romeo being rebuffed. Audiences instinctively trust him for laughs and are rarely let down. The man can even insult people and make them like it."
By age 24, Gleason began appearing in motion pictures, under the name Jackie C. Gleason. When director Lloyd Bacon visited the Club 18, Gleason took him aside and asked for a chance in pictures. Gleason then took the nightclub floor and began heckling Bacon, which convinced the director to bring Gleason to Hollywood. Gleason signed with Warner Bros. for Bacon's Navy Blues with Ann Sheridan and Martha Raye. Gleason's other major Warner credit was the Humphrey Bogart feature All Through the Night, which also featured a young Phil Silvers. Warners cast Gleason in four more films of diminishing importance; one of them, Lady Gangster had Gleason as a getaway-car driver for a gang of bank bandits.
In the wake of Abbott and Costello, most of the movie studios tried to imitate the team's military comedies. Warners loaned Gleason to Columbia Pictures, where he was paired with nightclub and movie comic Jack Durant for the Army comedy Tramp, Tramp, Tramp. Gleason accepted another loan-out to Twentieth Century-Fox, where Gleason played Glenn Miller's bass player in Orchestra Wives. He had a modest part as an actor's agent in the 1942 Betty Grable–Harry James musical Springtime in the Rockies. Warners had no further plans for Gleason and did not renew his contract.
Gleason had supplemented his movie salary by signing a $150-a-week deal to appear at Maxie Rosenbloom's popular nightclub. "He was a smash hit," wrote biographer W. J. Weatherby, "but none of the Hollywood executives who congratulated him offered him a movie role worthy of his talent." At the end of 1942, Gleason and Lew Parker led a large cast of entertainers in the roadshow production of Olsen and Johnson's New 1943 Hellzapoppin. He also became known for hosting all-night parties in his hotel suite; the hotel soundproofed his suite out of consideration for its other guests. "Anyone who knew Jackie Gleason in the 1940s", wrote CBS historian Robert Metz, "would tell you The Fat Man would never make it. His pals at Lindy's watched him spend money as fast as he soaked up the booze." Rodney Dangerfield wrote that he witnessed Gleason purchasing marijuana in the 1940s.
Gleason was initially exempt from military service during World War II because he was a father of two. However, in 1943, the U. S. Army started drafting men with children. When Gleason reported to his induction, doctors discovered that his broken left arm had healed crooked, that a pilonidal cyst existed at the end of his coccyx, and that he was 100 pounds overweight. Gleason was, therefore, classified 4-F and rejected for military service.
During an acute employment slump in late 1943, Gleason took the only job he could get: a guest shot on NBC's radio show The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, a hot-jazz jam session. Gleason was that week's "intermission commentator" and delivered a comic monologue about a girl who ran off with a trumpet player. He collected $350 for the appearance. As W. J. Weatherby related, "There were so many phone calls praising it as the funniest program listeners had ever heard that Jackie was invited back. 'Wait till I'm that desperate again,' he said."
Gleason's first significant recognition as an entertainer came on Broadway when he appeared in the hit musical Follow the Girls, starring singer Gertrude Niesen and comic dancer Tim Herbert.
Early television
Gleason's big break occurred in 1949 when, working nightclubs and earning the attention of New York City's inner circle, he landed work with the fledgling DuMont Television Network. His first role with DuMont was the role of blunt but softhearted aircraft worker Chester A. Riley for the first television version of the radio comedy The Life of Riley, replacing William Bendix, who was unable to take the role due to contractual issues. Despite positive reviews, the show was canceled after one year, in part to DuMont's substantial disadvantages. As Gleason's time on The Life of Riley ended in 1950, DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars variety hour in 1950 had an opening when that show's host Jerry Lester jumped to NBC to host the first late-night comedy/variety series Broadway Open House. Comedy writer Harry Crane, whom Gleason knew from his days as a stand-up comedian in New York, recommended Gleason for the job. The program initially had rotating hosts; Gleason was first offered two weeks at $750 per week. The offer was extended to four weeks when he responded that this arrangement would not be worth the train trip to New York. Gleason returned to New York for the show and soon became permanent host. He framed the acts with splashy dance numbers, developed sketch characters he would refine over the next decade, and became enough of a presence that CBS wooed him to its network in 1952.Renamed The Jackie Gleason Show, the program became the country's second-highest-rated television show during the 1954–55 season. Gleason amplified the show with even splashier opening dance numbers inspired by Busby Berkeley's screen dance routines and featuring the precision-choreographed June Taylor Dancers. Following the dance performance, he would do an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music", he would shuffle toward the wings, clapping his hands and shouting, "And awaaay we go!" The phrase became one of his trademarks, along with "How sweet it is!". Theona Bryant, a former Powers Girl, became Gleason's "And awaaay we go" girl. Ray Bloch was Gleason's first music director, followed by Sammy Spear, who stayed with him through the 1960s; Gleason often kidded with his music directors during his opening monologues. He continued developing comic characters, including:
- Reginald Van Gleason III, a top-hatted millionaire with a taste for both the good life and fantasy;
- Rudy the Repairman, boisterous and boorish;
- Joe the Bartender, gregarious and with friendly words for the never-seen Mr. Dennehy ;
- The Poor Soul, a silent character who could come to grief in the least-expected places ;
- Rum Dum, a character with a brush-like mustache who often stumbled around as though drunk and confused;
- Fenwick Babbitt, a friendly, addle-headed young man usually depicted working at various jobs and invariably failing;
- Charlie Bratton, a loudmouth who frequently picked on the mild-mannered Clem Finch ;
- Stanley R. Sogg, a pitchman who usually appeared on commercials during late-night TV movies, often selling items that came with extras or bonuses ; and
- The Bachelor, a silent character doing everyday things in an unusually lazy way.
Gleason disliked rehearsing. Using photographic memory he read the script once, then watched a rehearsal with his co-stars and stand-in and shot the show later that day. When he made mistakes, he often blamed the cue cards.