The Full Biography
Jackie Gleason. Actor. The Brooklyn kid who made a bus driver’s bluster into a half-hour American bible, then spent the Florida years as a man who had already said how sweet it was.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Ralph Kramden in a vest, a fist that will not land, a moon that is a promise and a threat. The Honeymooners. What the still cannot show is Herbert Walton Gleason Jr. of Brooklyn, a father who left, a mother who died when he was a teenager, and a second life of golf, Miami Beach, a serious turn in The Hustler, and a death in 1987 that the bus has never accepted.
He was born on February 26, 1916, in Brooklyn. The household broke early. His father walked out. His mother, Mae, died when he was nineteen. He worked clubs, then television when television was still inventing itself. The Life of Riley for a moment. Then Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont network, and the CBS variety machine that made him The Great One — a nickname he did not invent and did not refuse. “And awaaay we go.” A poor Brooklyn apartment. Audrey Meadows as Alice. Art Carney as Norton. Joyce Randolph as Trixie. The Honeymooners sketches inside the variety hour were already a climate before anyone filmed a season of them.
The 39 filmed half-hours of 1955–56 are the civic object. A single season that became a bible. Ralph Kramden, a bus driver whose schemes collapse and whose bark hides a devotion he cannot quite say. The set was a kitchen. The fist never landed. “To the moon, Alice.” “How sweet it is.” He was, for a stretch, the biggest man on American television, in every sense. The variety hour around the sketches was a circus he ran like a borough president: the June Taylor Dancers, the Poor Soul pantomime — a silent little man in a hat — Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender talking to a Mr. Dennehy the audience never saw. He also recorded mood-music albums. Music for Lovers Only (1952) sat in the Billboard Top Ten for 153 weeks, a stay the chart still treats as architecture. He could not read sheet music. He hummed the climate and hired the men who could write it down. The bus hides the strings. The strings are in the file.
Before the 39 there was already a Gleason. Nightclubs. Small pictures. DuMont’s Cavalcade of Stars in 1950, where the Kramden sketches were born and Pert Kelton first played Alice. CBS bought the hour in 1952 and made it a Saturday fact. Meadows took the part and made it a marriage. Carney’s Norton — a sewer worker, a laugh that arrives before the joke — is the second monument inside the first. The filmed season was a decision: thirty-nine half-hours, done, a library. He could have run the sketches forever inside the variety hour. He put them on film instead. That is why a Sunday in any decade still has a kitchen.
Then a serious still. The Hustler (1961) put him in a pool hall as Minnesota Fats, opposite Paul Newman. Robert Rossen directed. Piper Laurie and George C. Scott were in the frame. The Academy nominated him for Best Supporting Actor. People who thought the fist was the whole instrument had to watch a man who understood a hush — the way Fats walks into a room, the way a cigarette is a clock. Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), from the Rod Serling play, asked for pathos without a laugh track; he played Maish, the manager, a man who has already sold what he should not have sold. Gigot (1962) was a mute janitor in Paris, a picture he also shaped from behind the idea. Soldier in the Rain (1963) with Steve McQueen. Papa’s Delicate Condition that same year. He could be royal about a cue card and exact about a silence. Both are the instrument.
The variety hour was not only Kramden. Joe the Bartender told stories to a Mr. Dennehy who never entered. The Poor Soul walked through the world without a line. Reginald Van Gleason III was a drunk swell, a different borough of the same man. The June Taylor Dancers opened the hour with a kaleidoscope shot from above that television still steals. “And awaaay we go.” He ran the hour like a borough president who also happened to be the show. When he moved it to Miami Beach in 1964, the hour became a Florida fact and the kitchen became a memory the specials would keep returning to. He did not owe a new bible. He had already filmed one.
How sweet it is.Jackie Gleason, a line that became a life sentence
In 1964 he moved the show to Miami Beach. The Jackie Gleason Show became a Florida fact. Golf became a second religion — Inverrary, a handicap, a man who had already been huge and was now a course. The Honeymooners revivals and the “lost” episodes CBS kept finding kept the apartment on the air. In 1977 he played Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, opposite Burt Reynolds, a comic chase that made him a second climate for a generation that had not lived with the 39. Two sequels followed. His last picture was Nothing in Common (1986), with Tom Hanks, a father who is failing and will not say so. It is a small, hard performance. It is not a vest. He died on June 24, 1987, in Fort Lauderdale, of colon cancer. He was seventy-one. He is buried at Our Lady of Mercy in Miami. The vest outlived the man. The catchphrases became grammar.
He married Genevieve Halford, then Beverly McKittrick, then Marilyn Taylor. Two daughters, Geraldine and Linda, have had to share a father who is an apartment. The turn is Miami and Fats. A lot of television men become their one character. He became a Florida gentleman who could still put on the vest and also, in a pool hall, be someone else. He did not owe a new Kramden. He owed, if he owed anything, the 39 episodes that still run. He had already paid.
Six things most people never knew
- A father gone and a mother dead are the first Brooklyn rooms. The bluster sits on a boy who had already lost the house.
- The 39 filmed Honeymooners are a single season that became a bible. 1955–56. The decades of reruns sit on those half-hours.
- He recorded easy-listening albums as a second climate. The Great One as a mood. The bus hides the strings. He could not read the charts he hummed.
- Minnesota Fats is a serious still. 1961. Newman. A pool hall. The fist was not the whole instrument.
- Miami Beach is the life after the peak, not a vacation. Golf. A show moved south. A Florida death.
- The catchphrases outlived the man on purpose. He built them to be said without him. They still are.
His daughters have had to share a father who is an apartment. Friends from the variety years describe a man who could be royal about a cue card and generous in a bar. Gleason on a Florida course was a man who had already been huge and was now a handicap. Both are the life. The 39 still run. The course is quiet. The vest is a still. The hush in the pool hall is the correction. Brooklyn still claims the boy who lost the house. Miami still claims the golfer. Both claims are true. The bus has never accepted the death. The reruns will not let it.
The later years
Home, after the move south, was Miami Beach and then the Inverrary course in Lauderhill. He treated golf as a second religion and the variety hour as a weekly parish he still knew how to run. The show in Florida kept the June Taylor Dancers and the old characters and added a sun that New York had not offered. He was, to the Beach, a neighbor who happened to have been Ralph Kramden, not a monument on a hill. He played. He ate. He kept a table. He did not become a waxwork of the vest. He became a Florida gentleman who could still put the vest on for a reunion and take it off for a tee time.
The Honeymooners did not end in 1956. CBS kept finding “lost” sketches — color hours from the 1960s Miami years, the “lost episodes” that were never lost so much as unfiled. Reunion specials in the 1970s put Meadows, Carney, and Randolph back in the kitchen as if the kitchen had only been out for lunch. He took the specials. He did not pretend they were the 39. The 39 were already a civic object. The specials were a courtesy and a paycheck. Smokey and the Bandit in 1977 made him a second climate: Buford T. Justice, a sheriff who cannot catch a Trans Am and will not admit it. Children who had never seen a bus driver learned a different Gleason, equally large, equally doomed, equally tender under the bark. He did two more, including Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), the last of which is a lesser chase that still uses the hat. In 1986 Nothing in Common asked him to be a dying father opposite a young Tom Hanks. It is the last time a movie camera looked at him as if he still belonged to a dramatic file. He looks as if he has already joined another one.
The Florida years also held a man who still ran a weekly hour into the 1970s, then let the hour go. Golf at Inverrary became the calendar. He designed a course mentality the way he had designed a kitchen: a mark, a count, a refusal to be small. Marilyn Taylor, a dancer from the old June Taylor line and the sister of the choreographer, was the last marriage. The daughters, Geraldine and Linda, have had to live beside an apartment that the country thinks it owns. He did not correct the country. He played golf. He ate. He kept a table. The cancer was already in the file before the Hanks picture finished saying so.
The body that had been the instrument began to argue. Colon cancer. He kept the course as long as the course would have him. Marilyn Taylor was there. The daughters were there in the way daughters of a famous apartment are there: inside the story and beside it. He died on June 24, 1987, in Fort Lauderdale. He was seventy-one. The funeral was Florida. The grave is at Our Lady of Mercy. Brooklyn still claims the boy. The 39 still claim the Sunday. The course claimed the rest. He had already, in the vest and the pool hall, written the public man. The last years were golf, the pictures that were not the vest, and a death the bus has never accepted because the reruns will not let the bus stop.
What those Florida years actually were is easy to miss because the kitchen is so loud. They were a man who had already invented a working-class bible and did not owe a new one. They were a golfer’s handicap and a sheriff’s hat and a father on a hospital bed in a Hanks picture. They were catchphrases that had already become grammar, which is a kind of immortality a Brooklyn boy could not have ordered and also could not refuse. He had already said how sweet it was. The last work was living as if that were enough.
The mood-music albums kept selling after the hour moved south. People who had never seen the vest put Music for Lovers Only on a turntable and thought the Great One was a climate of strings. He could not read the charts. He hummed them. That fact still surprises the kitchen’s congregation. Both rooms are the life: the fist that will not land, and the strings the bus hides. Fort Lauderdale was the last address. Brooklyn is the first. The Inverrary course is the floor he chose when the kitchen no longer needed him every week.
After he was gone
Every sitcom poor apartment still pays him a tax. Every “to the moon” still steals a fist that will not land. Meadows and Carney still arrive in the same sentence. The sentence is the right trio. Fats is the correction. The albums are the odd room in the house. Buford is the second climate. The 39 still run on a Sunday as if 1955 had not ended.
He came out of a broken Brooklyn, invented a bus driver, filmed 39 that would not die, put on a pool hustler, moved to the beach, and died after the phrases had already become climate. If you only remember the vest, you have the still. If you remember the 39, Fats, and the course, you have him.
Portrait: General Amusement Corporation / James Koll, photographer · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons