Recently there was a short blurb in Smithsonian magazine about an attempt to autheticate a sink which was purported to be part of the original Honeymooners set. The article showed a picture of the apartment set which reminded me of a question I’ve always had about that show. Why did they live in such a dump? Was it merely supposed to reflect their general level of unhappiness? I realize that the characters are supposed to be blue collar, but would a New York City bus driver really have only made enough money to keep himself and his wife in a grim tenement?
Being poor was all part of what made The Honeymooners so great? While Gleason, Carney, Meadows, and Randolph were all too old to really be young newly married couples, it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that a young bus driver or a sewer worker wouldn’t have the greatest place to live.
I imagine rents in NYC were just as high in the 1950s as they are now.
But the Norton’s apartment was much nicer looking - wallpaper, colorful curtains, knicknacks, appliances. And Ed certainly didn’t make much more than Ralph.
The Kramden’s apartment may have been much worse than the Norton’s for several reasons (1) Ralph was cheap (a frequent complaint of Alice); (2) Ralph was always losing his money on crazy schemes (another frequent theme); (3) Norton bought a lot of stuff on credit.
Don’t forget theory (4) Norton was secretly a financial genius.
He just acts stupid to throw Ralph off the trail… 
What always got me was their “icebox”. By the mid 1950’s, I think most people of decent means in a big city had a fridge and a B&W television.
Maybe the show was set in the 1940’s or something.
I recall reading somewhere that the apartment set looked much like the apartment that Gleason had grown up in, some 30 years before. That would explain some of the seemingly outdated features, like the icebox.
But was it really an icebox? To this day, my 74 year old parents call their fridge the icebox.
I’ve always thought living in that place day in and day out would make me suicidal. They didn’t even have any pictures on the wall or anything.
Yeah, I think it really was an icebox. I seem to remember them talking about the ice in it melting.
I’d have to see it again, but I thought the icebox was an old monitor top refrigerator (they had a cylinder at the top). People still called them iceboxes, though.
People were still using monitor tops as late as the 60s, so it wouldn’t be unusual for the Kramdens to have one.
It was an icebox all right. Remember when Ralph hid Alice’s present behind the drip pan under the icebox?
Old refrigerators had drip pans though, to catch water condensation coming off of the coils.
Definitely an icebox, with ice. Alice would sometimes complain to Ralph, “Why can’t we get an refrigerator like the Nortons have?”
I seem to remember reading an explanation of this by either Audrey Meadows or Jackie Gleason. I think it was Meadows. The explanation was that they wanted a humble set so that the typical t.v. viewer wouldn’t feel they were worse off than the Cramdens.
That’s an interesting contrast to today’s fictional world on the TV, in which the characters typically seem considerably more prosperous than real people, even if they’re supposed to be average. Even George Costanza seemed to have ample money for schmoozing at Monks, though he had lost his job and was about to move back home. Evidently today’s viewers would rather see characters doing better than they are.
As for the Kramdens, I’ll go with Ralph’s cheapness as being the main factor. IIRC in one episode they said they’d lived there for over 20 years, which means they would have moved in in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and Ralph was just never one to snap up the new conveniences as they came out. I don’t think they even had a radio, did they?
Who needs pictures on the wall when they very building you can see from your window sporadically changes!
The Kramden’s apartment was pretty grim…even a NYC bus driver made decnt money in the 1950’s. What I remeber about the show: the landlord actually collected the rent in cash! Also, they never seemed to spend any money…except for Ralph’s crazy schemes.
By the way, did men’s clubs in the 50’s really require member to wear crazy uniforms (like the “Loyal 
order of Raccoons”?)
They most certainly did, at least on some occasions. My parents still have my paternal grandfather’s Shriner fez, as well as a Masonic apron (though not exactly applicable to the 1950’s, since my GF died in 1948). My other gf was also a Mason, but we don’t have any of his regalia.
Sorry, I meant to say Kramdens.
My uncle was a NYC bus driver in the 1950s, and he had a nice well-furnished house in the Bronx. Bus drivers certainly weren’t poor by any means - they were middle class (at least lower middle class). I’m not sure about sewer workers, but another one of my uncles was a garbageman, and had a house in the suburbs.