October 1, 1955: "The Honeymooners" Premieres

Left to right: Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney and Joyce Randolph.

October 1, 1955: A new show premieres on CBS. Well, sort of: The Honeymooners had been a sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show, but now it becomes a standalone half-hour situation comedy, perhaps the greatest "sitcom" in history.

Like the variety show that spawned it, the sitcom was filmed before a live audience, in the ballroom of the Park Sheraton Hotel. In 1928, Mob financier Arnold Rothstein had been killed in his room at that hotel. In 1957, Albert Anastasia, "the Boss of All Bosses," was killed in the hotel's barber shop. In 1984, it returned to its original name, the Park Central Hotel.

The 1st episode, appropriately enough, discusses television itself: It is titled "TV Or Not TV," and shows what happens when Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden (Gleason) and sewer worker, upstairs neighbor and best friend Ed Norton (Art Carney) go halfsies on a television set, because neither one can afford their own. (Ralph has never had one, because he's cheap. Ed's 1st one just broke down.)

Ralph's wife, Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows), wants a TV set, but she doesn't think this arrangement will work. Interestingly, unless you count Alice's groan over a tricky sink, Ed's wife, Thelma "Trixie" Norton (Joyce Randolph), has the 1st line in the show's history: "Hiya, Alice!"

Ralph was always yelling at Alice. Today, we would call that "verbal abuse." And one of the things he yelled at her was threats. "You are gonna get yours." "You're going to the Moon!" "Hoo-hoo, would I like to... " "Oh-ho... Oh-ho... Bang! Zoom!"

And, just once in the "Classic 39" episodes -- he used this one a lot more when it was just a sketch on his earlier Jackie Gleason Show -- "One of these days, one of these days, pow! Right in the kisser!" As comedian Bill Maher put it, Ralph was always threatening to graduate from verbal to physical abuse, and mainstream America was fine with this, and thought it was funny.

You know how many times Ralph actually hit Alice onscreen in those 39 episodes? Zero. Because Alice wouldn't have put up with it. No, she couldn't have beaten Ralph in a genuine fight -- Gleason was 5-foot-10, and was usually around 240 pounds but peaked at 285 -- but if she so much as slapped him just once, he would have been so shocked that the woman he loved had done that to him, that he would have backed down. For all his "king of the castle" bluster, Ralphie Boy was whipped.

Sure, Ralph would get in Alice's face and berate her, but she was just as likely to get into his. Check out this exchange, from the aforementioned 1st episode, after she accused him of being cheap, leading to the lack of amenities in their apartment (and 328 Chauncey Street, which is a real address, was actually in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, not in Bensonhurst like was so often said onscreen):

Ralph: When we got married, you said, "Ralph, I'd be happy to live in a tent with you!"
Alice: I'm still willing. I think it'd be an improvement.
Ralph, shaking his fist in her face: You wanna go to the Moon? Do ya wanna go to the Moon?
Alice: That would be an improvement, too!

Look at this picture. Ralph has his fist balled up. Is Alice intimidated? Hell, no: She's standing her ground, ramrod straight, and giving Ralph a death stare.

She was from Brooklyn, too, you know: Alice Gibson Kramden was one tough redhead. She gave as good as she got, and, while Ralph would frequently continue the verbal thrust-and-parry, just as often, he would back down, and make that big sad moon face, and be contrite, and apologize.

And she would forgive him. Because, deep down, she loved him as much as he loved her. And he would acknowledge just how good a fit she was for him, say, "Baby, you're the greatest!" and grab her and bend her over and kiss her like in romantic movies -- a much better "Pow, right in the kisser." For all his big talk, he was a romantic and a sentimentalist.

Lucille Ball may have been the first woman with any power in television production, but Audrey Meadows was TV's first feminist.

The show had the occasional sports reference. In "The Golfer," Ralph tries to learn how to play golf to impress a bus company official. In "Here Comes the Bride," Ralph notes that Alice's sister, finally getting married, has been a bridesmaid so often, she caught her own bouquet. Alice said her foot slipped, and Ralph compares her to Willie Mays, saying, "If my foot could slip like that, I'd be playing center field for the New York Giants!"

In "Young At Heart," Ralph wears a varsity football letter sweater. The letter is V, although the name of his school is never revealed. (There is a Martin Van Buren High School in New York, but it's in Queens, and is unlikely to have been Ralphie Boy's alma mater.) And in the last episode, "A Man's Pride," Ralph runs into a high school nemesis at a boxing card at the old Madison Square Garden.

Gleason died in 1987, Meadows in 1996, Carney in 2003. As of October 1, 2022, Randolph is not only the last survivor of the main cast, she may be the last surviving castmember, period. Even the actors who played the kids on the show have died. (UPDATE: Randolph died in 2024, 9 months before she would have turned 100.)

In 2005, a film re-imagining The Honeymooners was released, directed by John Schultz, and set in the present day. Reflecting the current demographics of Brooklyn, it was a mostly-black cast. Ralph was played by Cedric the Entertainer, Alice by Gabrielle Union, Ed by Mike Epps, and Trixie by Regina Hall. Eric Stoltz and John Leguizamo also appear, in a plot based around, as original Alice would have put it, one of Ralph's "crazy harebrained schemes" to get rich quick.

The film flopped: Original Honeymooners fans didn't warm up to the reboot, though that may have been due less to race than to the casting of anyone other than the classic actors; and fans of the particular actors didn't take to it, either. The film cost $25 million to make, cheap by recent standards, but only grossed half that, making it as big a flop as one of Ralph's crazy harebrained schemes. Whoever suggested it was a good idea had a BIIIIIIIIG MOUUUUUUUUTH!

*

October 1, 1955 was a Saturday. In real life in Brooklyn, Game 4 of the World Series was played at Ebbets Field. The New York Yankees took a 2-0 lead on the Brooklyn Dodgers, including a home run by Gil McDougald. But the Dodgers came roaring back, with home runs from Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider, and beat the Yankees 8-5.

Clem Labine was the winning pitcher. Don Larsen was the losing pitcher: Larsen would have his day in the October Sun, and it would be against the Dodgers, but this would not be it. The Dodgers tied the Series, and won it at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 on October 4.

The starts of the NBA and NHL seasons were a few weeks away. However, in spite of it being a Saturday, there was 2 NFL games played on the day:

* The Washington Redskins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 31-30 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* And the Baltimore Colts beat the Detroit Lions, 28-13 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

Also, Arsenal beat Aston Villa, 1-0 at Highbury in North London.