The Honeymooners Lost Episodes 1951-1957, 60th Anniversary Edition (MPI, 15 DVDs, NR, 50 hours). I grew up in a family that watched “The Honeymooners” every week, the show about the bickering, but loving couple stuck in a small New York apartment. Jackie Gleason played Ralph Kramden, a Brooklyn bus driver, and Audrey Meadows was his wife, Alice. The other two recurring characters were their neighbors and friends, Art Carney as sewer worker Ed Norton (he appears in the first episode briefly as a policeman, however) and Joyce Randolph as his wife, Trixie. The classic series ran for only 39 episodes. However, there is much more to “The Honeymooners” than the classic series, and that is all collected here.
This huge set is a collection of “The Honeymooners” sketches, and sometimes complete shows, that were part of “Cavalcade of Stars” in 1951 and 1952 (nine episodes here; another 15 are lost forever) and “The Jackie Gleason Show” from 1952 to 1957. In total, there are 107 live episodes, including eight musical hours not seen since 1957 and two CBS radio episodes. Thirty episodes have never been available on DVD before. There is one whole disc of extras, including a new “History of the Lost Episodes” and “All About Trixie: The Joyce Randolph Interview.” Other bonus material includes original introductions, curtain calls and cast commercials; the Ed Norton interviews from “The Jackie Gleason Show”; extra footage with cast members; color home movies taken on the set; original scripts for three missing episodes; and a 42-page booklet with a detailed history of the show and rare photos compiled by historian Robert S. Bader.
The “Cavalcade of Stars” episodes are among the most interesting, as Alice was then played by Pert Kelton, but she would lose the role when she and her husband became blacklisted during the Communist witch hunts of the Fifties. The very first episode sets the tone, as Alice asks Ralph to go get bread for dinner and the tired Ralph goes off on her, demanding to know why she did not get the bread during the day. The episode escalates until everything in the apartment is being thrown out the window, including a can of flour that ends up on Carney’s policeman. The couple have been married 12 years and despite their arguing, could not live without each other, as shown many times, but particularly in the sketch in which Ralph threatens to leave.
We first see Trixie and Ed Norton in the third episode, when they are invited over to watch the Kramdens’ new TV, which costs a whole $2 a week. The 1952 Christmas episode takes up the whole of that night’s “Jackie Gleason Show,” with Gleason playing Ralph Kramden, Joe the Bartender, The Poor Soul, a TV repairman and Reggie Van Gleason III, getting to dance up a storm with some show girls in the latter role. In fact, the Christmas episode was, in effect, a variety show, including vocal performances by visitor Patricia Morrison and — big surprise — future teen singing idol Frankie Avalon as a boy wonder trumpet player, who also does some tap dancing (but does not sing!). Grade for set: 4 stars
