Here’s how ‘The Honeymooners’ star Jackie Gleason’s show methods drove his co-star Audrey Meadows to tears, and how she cleverly found a fix that worked.
Legendary comic Jackie Gleason wasn’t called The Great One for nothing. He knew what worked and what didn’t work on the now-iconic comedy he was in charge of.
Things were done on The Honeymooners set Gleason’s way, no questions asked. As Audrey Meadows’ co-star Joyce Randolph told the Television Academy Foundation in 1999, this prompted the Alice Kramden star to break down in tears of frustration.
‘The Honeymooners’ ran for 39 episodes
Gleason didn’t create The Honeymooners but he made every last decision relating to the show’s success as he saw it.
His most important decision on the series was to call it quits after a single season. The comedy has had staying power even with just 39 episodes. As far as the star’s reasoning for ending it early, he claimed he didn’t want the show to overstay its welcome.
“We were running out of ideas,” Gleason told Johnny Carson in 1996. “I liked The Honeymooners and I liked doing them, and I didn’t want to denigrate them by forcing scenes that didn’t mean anything.
“So I wanted to quit, but they didn’t believe me,” he added. “They thought I had another job someplace, but I didn’t. I’m glad I did stop them, because what we had done was good and if we had gone any further, we might have spoiled it.”
