Okla-homey
6/24/2008, 06:50 AM
June 24, 1987: Jackie Gleason dies
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9700/gleason20look20611954dp8.jpg
Twenty-one years ago today, actor Jackie Gleason dies in 1987. Gleason was one of the biggest TV stars of the twentieth century. Raised by a single mother who worked at a subway token booth in New York who died when Gleason was 18, Gleason dropped out of high school and began performing on the vaudeville circuit in his teens.
Signed to a movie contract by the time he was 24 years old, Gleason played character roles in a handful of movies in 1941 and 1942, but found much more success in television. He became one of TV's most popular stars in a number of shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show, which ran on CBS throughout most of the 1950s and '60s.
The show was typical of the then popular variety show format that hearkened back to Vaudeville theatericals. The genre included guest singers, dancing by a show troupe and comedy skits performed by the show company. The closest thing to the format left on TV is probably Saturday Night Live.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4800/glcbsjackiegleasonname5bo7.jpg
Gleason also coined a national catchphrase. Following a dance performance by the June Taylor Dancers that opened each Jackie Gleason Show episode, Gleason did an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music", he would shuffle toward the wing, clapping his hands inversely hollering, "And awa-a-aay we go!" The phrase became one of his trademarks.
On the show, Gleason created the character of Ralph Kramden, a bus driver who became the beloved star of the spin-off television show The Honeymooners.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/2417/gleason130214thehoneymopo3.jpg
The Honeymooners would be the inspiration for other shows based on a main character who was a prickly but often loveable fool. Such characters include Carrol O'Connor's Archie Bunker (Gleason was offered but declined the role) and Redd Foxx's Fred Sanford. In fact, one can argue the Kramden character Gleason created was probably even the inspiration for and forebear of Fred Flintstone with Barney Rubble as Fred's "Norton".
Gleason was also a very accomplished pool player, and made his own shots in the critically acclaimed 1961 film starring Gleason as pool hustler Minnesota Fats opposite a young Paul Newman in The Hustler.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/8198/gleasonbbestfn2.jpg
Gleason was also well-received as a beleaguered boxing manager in the movie version of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), which also featured Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney, and (under his birth name, Cassius Clay) Muhammad Ali.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/900/gleasonrequiemforaheavyqr9.jpg
Gleason also played a world-weary Army sergeant, with Steve McQueen supporting him as a Gomer Pyle-like private and Tuesday Weld as his love interest, in Soldier in the Rain (1962).
Folks too young to recall Gleason's TV roles, probably remember him best as the hapless sheriff Buford T. Justice in the wildly popular Smokey and the Bandit franchise.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9437/gleasonmikehenry54la9.jpg
A six-pack-a-day smoker for years, Gleason was fighting colon cancer, liver cancer and thrombosed hemorrhoids by 1986. He was hospitalized at one point in 1986–87 but checked himself out and died quietly at age 71 at his Inverrary, FL home.
In the same year, Miami Beach honored his contributions to the city and its tourism by renaming the Miami Beach Auditorium — where he had done his television show once moving to Florida — as the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. Jackie Gleason is interred in an outdoor mausoleum at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami, Florida.
Below the graceful Roman columns, at the base, is the inscription "And Away We Go."
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/6317/glflmiagleason0704kf1.jpg
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/165/glflmiagleason0706yi1.jpg
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9700/gleason20look20611954dp8.jpg
Twenty-one years ago today, actor Jackie Gleason dies in 1987. Gleason was one of the biggest TV stars of the twentieth century. Raised by a single mother who worked at a subway token booth in New York who died when Gleason was 18, Gleason dropped out of high school and began performing on the vaudeville circuit in his teens.
Signed to a movie contract by the time he was 24 years old, Gleason played character roles in a handful of movies in 1941 and 1942, but found much more success in television. He became one of TV's most popular stars in a number of shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show, which ran on CBS throughout most of the 1950s and '60s.
The show was typical of the then popular variety show format that hearkened back to Vaudeville theatericals. The genre included guest singers, dancing by a show troupe and comedy skits performed by the show company. The closest thing to the format left on TV is probably Saturday Night Live.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4800/glcbsjackiegleasonname5bo7.jpg
Gleason also coined a national catchphrase. Following a dance performance by the June Taylor Dancers that opened each Jackie Gleason Show episode, Gleason did an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music", he would shuffle toward the wing, clapping his hands inversely hollering, "And awa-a-aay we go!" The phrase became one of his trademarks.
On the show, Gleason created the character of Ralph Kramden, a bus driver who became the beloved star of the spin-off television show The Honeymooners.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/2417/gleason130214thehoneymopo3.jpg
The Honeymooners would be the inspiration for other shows based on a main character who was a prickly but often loveable fool. Such characters include Carrol O'Connor's Archie Bunker (Gleason was offered but declined the role) and Redd Foxx's Fred Sanford. In fact, one can argue the Kramden character Gleason created was probably even the inspiration for and forebear of Fred Flintstone with Barney Rubble as Fred's "Norton".
Gleason was also a very accomplished pool player, and made his own shots in the critically acclaimed 1961 film starring Gleason as pool hustler Minnesota Fats opposite a young Paul Newman in The Hustler.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/8198/gleasonbbestfn2.jpg
Gleason was also well-received as a beleaguered boxing manager in the movie version of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), which also featured Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney, and (under his birth name, Cassius Clay) Muhammad Ali.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/900/gleasonrequiemforaheavyqr9.jpg
Gleason also played a world-weary Army sergeant, with Steve McQueen supporting him as a Gomer Pyle-like private and Tuesday Weld as his love interest, in Soldier in the Rain (1962).
Folks too young to recall Gleason's TV roles, probably remember him best as the hapless sheriff Buford T. Justice in the wildly popular Smokey and the Bandit franchise.
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9437/gleasonmikehenry54la9.jpg
A six-pack-a-day smoker for years, Gleason was fighting colon cancer, liver cancer and thrombosed hemorrhoids by 1986. He was hospitalized at one point in 1986–87 but checked himself out and died quietly at age 71 at his Inverrary, FL home.
In the same year, Miami Beach honored his contributions to the city and its tourism by renaming the Miami Beach Auditorium — where he had done his television show once moving to Florida — as the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. Jackie Gleason is interred in an outdoor mausoleum at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami, Florida.
Below the graceful Roman columns, at the base, is the inscription "And Away We Go."
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/6317/glflmiagleason0704kf1.jpg
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/165/glflmiagleason0706yi1.jpg