In the episode where Ed and Ralph split the cost of a TV set, Alice snaps at Ralph about how he’s “…spending money playing poker, spending money playing pool, or spending money at that crazy lodge…”
Of course, Ed spends money on all that too. But later, there’s a scene where Ed tells Ralph about how his furniture and appliances are credit purchases, and he can’t afford a TV either. So, the Norton’s may have nicer things, but they are deep in debt.
So, that explains a little about the disparity between the families.
[Ralph Kramden [explaining the reason he won’t buy Alice a TV set] I’m waiting for 3D television, that’s the reason.
[Alice Kramden ] Are you waiting for 3D refrigerators, too?
That is a pretty sharp dig on Alice’s part. The Kramden’s only have an icebox. And a table and two chairs. I can only think their massive appeal was that they were a dirt poor yet fascinating couple who lived in Brooklyn, at the time the 4th largest city in the USA.
Right, I think the Kramdens were supposed to be lower middle-class, but not “poor.”
I think our view now is mostly indicative of how people’s standard of living has dramatically increased since the early ‘50s, especially considering the fact that the couple only has one income.
Obstinate yet likeable character, even if you had to tolerate him vicariously via Alice or Ed.
Every “Bang, zoom to the Moon, Alice!” was matched wih a “Baby, you’re the greatest”. The show never came close to “Streetcar! The Musical” or the other one with Brando.
Thus, it’s endurance. Is there still a WPIX in New York that always showed “The Honeymooners” at 11 PM? And classic Trek and twilight zone. Those shows had more of a morality and idea of comeuppance.
Thanks for the interesting pics of the Electronicam, particularly that magazine ad. By curious coincidence, I was just watching the sixth episode of The Honeymooners (“The Sleepwalker”) which was the same high quality video as all the others, but when the final scene faded in, it was suddenly of dramatically lower quality and very blurred. I assume that the final scene filmed on the Electronicam was somehow lost, or one of the film cameras malfunctioned, because it looks like they had to splice in a kinescope for that final scene.
I Love Lucy (which ran between 1951 and 1957) is another old TV series that was preserved on film, and that one has an interesting history. CBS wanted the show produced in New York and, per the custom of the time, broadcast live, so that the largest viewership on the east coast got the high quality live broadcasts while everybody else got kinescopes. Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball wanted to stay in California, so they proposed that the show be filmed instead, and offered to pay for it out of their own salaries in return for syndication rights. CBS readily agreed, thinking that they weren’t really giving up anything because who would want to watch a rerun of a sitcom? The show went on to become the most frequently and widely syndicated in television history, and made Lucy and Desi rich.
They were not supposed to be poor - lower-middle class most likely. But Alice would have had a job if Ralph didn’t make enough to keep them out of actual poverty. My impression was that Ralph was sort of cheap, in a way that I saw in a lot of men of his class, when I was young - he was cheap about things that he didn’t personally care about like an icebox or a TV or furniture. But he bowled and shot pool and went on Racoon fishing trips and even vacations to Fred’s landing (where Alice told him to ask Fred for a cheaper tent with a smaller snake when an IRS problem meant they might not have the money for the vacation)
I remember when I was a kid both The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy being widely syndicated. For some reason Lucy tended to run in the morning and Honeymooners late at night. The difference that made Lucy so historic is that the 180 filmed episodes made for a rich repository for syndication, while Honeymooners only had 39 episodes preserved on film.
While people were not in the Depression, they REMEMBER living through the Depression and were cautious with their money. If you had a TV, you were doing pretty well. TV wasn’t in every house overnight, and programming wasn’t even steady in the 1950s. A lot of dead air time between shows, I understand.
Men didn’t want their women working, as shown in an episode when Ralph was laid off. Likewise, women in the working world was a small percent, especially married women…and only got jobs like secretaries that included (besides the joy of typing and dictation) menial tasks like making and distrubuting the coffee for the men. Most families were one-income families, and the wife was expected to stay home and run the household (i.e., cooking, cleaning, shopping) and raise the children.
I just saw that episode (as my wife and I are running through our DVDs, an episode a night before bed). The irony is the telegram was for Ralph, but while we still do not know where Alice’s mother lives, the fact that is a telegram did not surprise Alice. And, she jumped to the conclusion (as did Ralph) it was her mother who was coming.
This is another area where the show is inconsistent. That one was episode 9, “Brother Ralph”. But in episode 4, “A Woman’s Work Is Never Done”, Ralph is fine with Alice going to work and fancies himself a member of the upper class when they hire a maid.
Whether men wanted women to work or not, poor women have always worked * and lots of them would have been thrilled to have a job like secretary rather than cleaning office buildings at night, doing piece work at home , working in the small store-sized factories that still exist in Brooklyn and Queens etc. If Alice didn’t earn money in some way , they were not living in actual poverty - and they were certainly not poor if they lived off one income with money for entertainment like vacations and bowling.
As of March 1950,working women who were married and living with their husbands outnumbered the single women in the labor force; there were almost 8.6 million married women as compared with 5.6 million single women. Nearly one-fourth (23.8 percent) of the married women who were living with their husbands worked outside the home.
That 23.8% of married women living with their husbands who were working was not predominantly middle and upper class women.
Ralph made “Sixty two dollars a week!” as Alice once complained. When Ralph shushed her, “I don’t want my salary to leak out”, she replied, “Your salary couldn’t DRIP out!”
I don’t know how much Ed made, but his apartment was nicer because he bought stuff on credit.
The “Classic 39” were the best known. But there were many more “Lost Episodes” recovered in the late 1980s. They came from the old Gleason show going back to (I think) the late 40s. Many of these shows were redone on the 1960s Florida-based variety “Jackie Gleason Show”.
Also, I’m no expert, but the Lucy episodes look like much better quality than the Honeymooners classic 39.
I don’t think so. They look the same to me, and both were filmed on theatrical-format 35mm film. Both are available in high definition on Blu-ray discs as well as standard definition DVDs.
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