#jackie gleason

[thecinamonroe]

Marilyn Monroe attending a party at Toot's Shor restaurant in New York, February 1955.

[citizenscreen]

Hal Needham‘S SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT enjoyed its premiere at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on May 19, 1977.

[summerwages]

How sweet it is..

[oldshowbiz]

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[hooked-on-elvis]

CBS Studios, New York, January 28, 1956. Elvis Presley on the "The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show" produced by Jackie Gleason and hosted by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey.

[howlingday]

Nora: I made a sandwich with cheese and ham and roast beef and sausage and butter and jam and ketchup and peanut butter and I also had a slice of pizza, but no anchovies.

Pyrrha: No anchovies?

Nora: Yeah! I don't want to make a pig out of myself!

Pyrrha: ...

Nora: Not only that, but I also has about ten bottles of root beer right next to me so that I can wash it all down while I watch the big fight!

Pyrrha: Oh, really? Who was fighting?

Nora: Me and Ren, because he didn't want me eating in the kitchen.

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Thanks for the posts/reposts. Great stuff. You’ve provided some great fantasies.

Question: What are your thoughts on Jackie Gleason. He and Carroll O’Connor are two of my favorite actor fantasies. Thanks and keep it going.

I love Jackie Gleason. I would have thought I had more posts of him.

As for Carroll O’Connor, he one of my all time favorite fantasy men.

[sesiondemadrugada]

The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961).

[gatutor]

Tina Louise-Jackie Gleason "How to commit marriage" 1969, de Norman Panama.

[schlock-luster-video]

On October 22, 1977, Smokey and the Bandit debuted in Japan.

[sempredomingo]

[citizenscreen]

Jackie Gleason's “The Honeymooners" debuted on CBS #OnThisDay in 1955. The sitcom replaced the skit version on Gleason’s variety program. Production ended after 39 episodes.

[louxosenjoyables]

[oldshowbiz]

Jackie Gleason was a hedonistic ne’er-do-well for his entire career. Long before he was famous he convinced the producers of the Broadway sketch comedy revue The Duchess Misbehaves to advance him a month’s salary, which he promptly wasted on booze, broads and card games. When he stumbled through rehearsals hungover and half drunk, he was fired and replaced with the burlesque comedian Joey Faye.

Broadway producer David Merrick had similar problems when Gleason starred in his production Take Me Along. He called Gleason “a big, fat drunken slob … who was appearing night after night virtually drunk on stage.”

Gleason and booze went hand in hand. Even his famous nickname – The Great One – was bestowed by Orson Welles when the larger than life duo got absolutely hammered together.

One afternoon when he was wasted on the golf course, Gleason engaged in a golf cart race, driving wildly out of control with his manager Bullets Durgom in the passenger seat. When the cart crashed and capsized, Durgom was hospitalized for a fractured spine.

Gleason was among the most popular personalities in America, but he was not without his haters. Television created a new subgenre in American media – the irate letter writer. Newspapers in the 1950s were filled with angry letters to the editor complaining about everyone and everything. In the decades prior to “mean tweets” it was the letters to the editor section where irate cranks expressed their lunatic feelings.

“Nothing Jackie Gleason does will ever look good to me,” wrote a viewer to The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1955. “He is not a comedian. He is a fat tub of lard who talks too much. What ever happened to his diet? I am glad he is off for the season. – No Gleason Fan.”

[vintage-tech]

Now playing on my turntable: Jackie Gleason Plays Romantic Jazz. Which of course he personally didn't, The Great One couldn't read a note, but he received conducting credit on this record from 1955. And kudos to the cover artist for making him look thin and suave.

AllMusic gave the album a rating of four-and-a-half stars. Reviewer Greg Adams called it one of Gleason's "jazzier" efforts but concludes it "isn't quite mood music or jazz -- it falls somewhere in between, with the potential to appeal to the audiences of both styles of music."

I concur: It's some good music but not really in his For Lovers Only series of mood music, and not much of it is jazz as we think of it.

The result, still Jackie Gleason at his best, is jazz, as romantically gay as a walk in the rain, as lively as a picnic, more thoroughly listenable than anything you've ever heard!

I dunno about "more listenable than anything I've ever heard", but if you want Gleason's music at its best, check out "I Only Have Eyes For You" off his 1952 first album. That is what mood music should be!!