You know, I don’t have much to say here except she had a good long life, and I liked Trixie Norton better than Ethel Mertz as a second banana.
She was 99 years old. She wasn’t much known for anything other than “The Honeymooners,” and was a distant fourth wheel even at that. Really, who could hold a candle to the other three? She was married to the same guy 42 years from 1955 to 1997 until his death. I hope she had a good life.
The Honeymooners had a couple of specials long after the original series ended. I didn’t think they were particularly good, but I found it interesting that Joyce Randolph wasn’t among the cast, although Audrey Meadows, Art Carney, and of course Gleason were. I assumed that even then she was perhaps in ill health.
Loved The Honeymooners. The ep I remember best was when Ralph gets a shot at “Name That Tune” and practices with Ed. Funny stuff.
Is that the one in which Ed plays the piano and starts every song with a riff from “Swanee River?” That’s one hilarious episode!
Indeed it is.
Who wrote Swanee River? asks the host.
“Ed Norton” replies Ralph.
I still think the best episode of the “Classic 39” was “Better Living Through TV”, where Ralph hatches a harebrained scheme to sell a thousand “Handy Housewife Helper” all-purpose kitchen gadgets via a live television commercial performed by him and Norton. One of the best lines in the episode is when Ralph pleads with Alice to give him the money for the commercial, and asks (paraphrased from memory) “how many doors would I have knock on to sell a thousand of these?”, and Alice replies, “just one, if he came to your door first”.
Another hilarious part was when Ralph, slamming his finger on the “Handy Housewife Helper” on live TV goes into one of his fits of agony, and his flailing around ends up knocking over an entire wall of the kitchen set. My impression from the first time I saw it was that knocking the entire wall over was accidental (this was all broadcast and filmed live) which made it that much funnier.