Jackie Gleason

The closed casket of Jackie Gleason will be on view to the public today at Lithgow Funeral Home in North Miami, a family spokesman said Thursday. A funeral Mass, closed except to family members, will be said Saturday, he said, and the time and place will not be made public. Burial arrangements were still not complete for the actor-comic, who died of cancer of the colon and liver Wednesday night in his home near Fort Lauderdale. He was 71.

Initially known for such obsessive noirs as "Laura" and "Fallen Angel," Otto Preminger enjoyed a long run in the 1950s and '60s as one of Hollywood's most ambitious practitioners of the issue movie. Driven to dramatize big social-political themes and the largest institutions of public life, he tackled drug addiction ("The Man With the Golden Arm"), the legal system ("Anatomy of a Murder"), the state of Israel ("Exodus"), Beltway duplicity ("Advise & Consent"), the Catholic Church ("The Cardinal")

Jackie Gleason, the barrel-shaped "Great One" who won television fame and riches as a blustering bus driver in "The Honeymooners," and an Oscar nomination for his film portrayal of an aging pool shark in "The Hustler," died Wednesday at his home outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 71, and his wife, Marilyn, said cancer was the immediate cause of death. Gleason had been released only last week from Imperial Point Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, where he had been undergoing treatment.

It was Orson Welles who gave Jackie Gleason the moniker "The Great One" when the filmmaker and the comic genius were out on the town one night. Gleason, who died in 1987 at age 71, was also known as "Mr. Saturday Night" because he dominated Saturday night programming on CBS from 1951 until 1970. Just as with Lucille Ball in "I Love Lucy," the former nightclub performer became a superstar on TV in the medium's earliest days, creating such beloved characters as the poignant Poor Soul, the exuberant Reggie Van Gleason III and the chatty Joe the Bartender.

It was Orson Welles who gave Jackie Gleason the moniker "The Great One" when the filmmaker and the comic genius were out on the town one night. Gleason, who died in 1987 at age 71, was also known as "Mr. Saturday Night" because he dominated Saturday night programming on CBS from 1951 until 1970. Just as with Lucille Ball in "I Love Lucy," the former nightclub performer became a superstar on TV in the medium's earliest days, creating such beloved characters as the poignant Poor Soul, the exuberant Reggie Van Gleason III and the chatty Joe the Bartender.

When Brad Garrett was a young stand-up comedian working clubs around the country, he could come home around 1 or 2 in the morning, sit in front of the television set with a bag of Chee-tos and watch repeats of the classic 1955-56 Jackie Gleason comedy series, "The Honeymooners." Garrett immediately felt a kinship with the Gleason who played the blustery but lovable bus driver Ralph Kramden in the seminal sitcom.

Jackie Gleason fans are in for a treat at 9 tonight when the Disney Channel airs "The Honeymooners Really Lost Debut Episodes." Americans got this first look at Ralph Kramden in 1951 on the Dumont network. Casting notes: Pert Kelton plays Alice, and Art Carney's there, but not as Norton.

It may be hard to fathom, but The Honeymooners, one of the most beloved shows from TV's Golden Age, was not a success when it aired on CBS from October, 1955 to September, 1956. The top-rated show that season was "The $64,000 Question."

RALPH, the Royal Assn. for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners, a fan club that helped uncover lost episodes of "The Honeymooners" and brought the classic sitcom back on the air, has folded because of the death of Jackie Gleason. Founders Peter Crescenti and Bob Columbe of Old Brookville, N.Y., recently sent out a final newsletter to members--who include Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper--memorializing Gleason, who starred as bus driver Ralph Kramden.

JACKIE GLEASON: An Intimate Portrait of the Great One by W. J. Weatherby (Pharos Books: $19.95; 288 pp.). Weatherby has served as biographer for an unlikely trio--James Baldwin (whom, like Gleason, he had known for decades), Salman Rushdie and now The Great One, comedian and actor Jackie Gleason. He first met his subject in 1961, when a rude snub of a reporter's request for an interview led to an apology and a night on the town.

When Brad Garrett was a young stand-up comedian working clubs around the country, he could come home around 1 or 2 in the morning, sit in front of the television set with a bag of Chee-tos and watch repeats of the classic 1955-56 Jackie Gleason comedy series, "The Honeymooners." Garrett immediately felt a kinship with the Gleason who played the blustery but lovable bus driver Ralph Kramden in the seminal sitcom.

With only three days left until she tied the knot, Jane Edith Wilson was going to have one last wild night as a single woman. The Conga Room? A male strip show? Nope. Wilson, a 36-year-old Los Angeles actress-comedian spent her waning minutes as an unattached woman gripping a large neon ball and bowling with seven friends. On a recent night at Jillian's Hi-Life Lanes in Universal City--a cross between a retro bowling alley and ritzy bar--the bachelorette party was well underway.

It could have been an argument right out of Ralph and Alice Kramden's kitchen on "The Honeymooners." Swelling with indignation, the bus driver shouts: "One of these days, Alice! One of these days they're gonna build a statue to me in this town!" To which Alice replies: "Sure they will, Ralph. And they'll call it the Tower of Babble."

Jackie Gleason was dubbed "The Great One" long before Wayne Gretzky picked up a hockey stick and earned that nickname, so it's perhaps appropriate that TV Land will showcase "The Honeymooners" in a manner worthy of a king--or at least befitting a sitcom that helped gild TV's Golden Age. The nostalgic cable channel has restored roughly three minutes to each of the 39 episodes produced during the 1955-56 season that were excised for the broadcast of reruns in syndication.

Audrey Meadows, revered as the feisty Alice Kramden opposite Jackie Gleason's garrulous bus driver Ralph in television's comedy classic "The Honeymooners," has died. Meadows died of lung cancer at 8:50 p.m. Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, hospital spokesman Ron Wise said Sunday. Relatives said she was 69. Meadows had concealed the terminal illness for more than a year, even from her sister and brother-in-law, entertainers Jayne Meadows and Steve Allen.

Jackie Gleason fans are in for a treat at 9 tonight when the Disney Channel airs "The Honeymooners Really Lost Debut Episodes." Americans got this first look at Ralph Kramden in 1951 on the Dumont network. Casting notes: Pert Kelton plays Alice, and Art Carney's there, but not as Norton.

Jackie Gleason was mourned Saturday at a private funeral service by about 150 people, including his family and actress Audrey Meadows, who played his wife, Alice, in "The Honeymooners." "We've lost a pal. Like everybody said, he was the world's greatest," said Philip Cuoco, a "Honeymooners" associate producer. Meadows, who played Alice Kramden to Gleason's Ralph Kramden on television, was dressed in black and held a single red carnation--a Gleason trademark.

The deaths of Fred Astaire and Jackie Gleason within a few days of each other have prompted a number of cultural observers to look for parallels in their careers. Both were masters at what they did. Both were sui generis figures. Astaire was not only an incomparable dancer--and an impeccably stylish singer--but he defined a sort of American '30s figure whose romantic cosmopolitan buoyancy would never be managed quite as well by anyone else.

JACKIE GLEASON: An Intimate Portrait of the Great One by W. J. Weatherby (Pharos Books: $19.95; 288 pp.). Weatherby has served as biographer for an unlikely trio--James Baldwin (whom, like Gleason, he had known for decades), Salman Rushdie and now The Great One, comedian and actor Jackie Gleason. He first met his subject in 1961, when a rude snub of a reporter's request for an interview led to an apology and a night on the town.

It may be hard to fathom, but The Honeymooners, one of the most beloved shows from TV's Golden Age, was not a success when it aired on CBS from October, 1955 to September, 1956. The top-rated show that season was "The $64,000 Question."