The Honeymooners: Lost Episodes Vol. 9 (DVD) directed by Frank Satenstein

Product information for The Honeymooners: Lost Episodes Vol. 9 (DVD) directed by Frank Satenstein

0030306351322. New condition. DVD. Run time: 50 mins. Language: English. Although he tried very hard to become a movie star as well as create and produce television entertainment that was a lot flashier like it or not The Honeymooners ended up being the single creation for which Jackie Gleason was best known. One irony surrounding its recognition over the decades was that as a series in its own right it was only on for a single season 1955-1956 with 39 episodes running 26 minutes each. They were performed in front of a live audience but shot on film to be broadcast later. All of the other Honeymooners shows -- the so-called Lost Episodes -- were comedy sketches of varying lengths performed and broadcast live as part of Gleason s larger variety program The Jackie Gleason Show; they were preserved on kinescopes films shot of the show off of a studio monitor. The results were crude but effective rather like the sketch comedy itself. The sketch performances of The Honeymooners from 1952-1955 may have established the setting the premise and the characters but those 39 filmed episodes showed what could be done with them under ideal circumstances. Set in a working-class section of Brooklyn (actually resembling Bushwick but referred to as Bensonhurst because the latter sounded more Brooklyn-like to people from outside New York) the series told of the daily life of bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) of 328 Chauncey Street a rundown walk-up apartment building and their neighbors and best friends Ed Norton (Art Carney) a sewer-worker and his wife Trixie (Joyce Randolph). Most of the action took place in the Kramdens dimly lit dingy apartment with its table chairs dresser and ice-box; we occasionally see the Nortons better-decorated apartment upstairs and every so often a scene might be set at Ralph s bus company or on a street adjacent to where Norton was working in a man-hole or the local pool room. Rarely there would be a scene in a fancy restaurant or at the home of one of Ralph s bosses or a wealthy acquaintance. Most of the scripts dealt with one of Ralph s million-dollar ideas and how they seemed to inevitably end in disaster for Ralph and Norton usually with Alice (often joined by Trixie) watching sardonically from the sidelines. This often occurred after an argument in which Ralph has gesticulated with his fist in Alice s direction and muttered Bang! -- Zoom! or Do you want to go to the Moon? Some of the other scripts dealt with Ralph and Norton s lodge the Loyal Order of Racoons or Ralph s stormy relationship with Alice s mother. That The Honeymooners could rival the impact of I Love Lucy which ran years longer and left behind many hundreds more episodes is a tribute to its cast and crew especially the show s writers. The best of The Honeymooners scripts (and there were a lot that could qualify) were seamless self-contained wholes unto themselves. The episodes come off as being every bit as beautifully symmetrical as the best one-act plays often with some surprisingly serious subtexts beneath the surface and a delightful self-referential quality where its own medium was concerned. The opening episode TV or Not TV in which Ralph and Ed buy a television set jointly only to discover that they can t get along for even a single night watching the set is a side-splittingly comic sketch and essay on the seductive power of television on people s lives presented at a time when it was a new device in homes. Better Living Through TV takes us back to the same subject from a slightly different angle and in the process manages to mercilessly parody a then-current Chef Boyardee commercial -- as well as poke fun at Gleason s avoidance of complete rehearsals -- while anticipating at least a generation s worth of laughable late-night commercials to come. The $99 000 Answer gives us yet another glimpse of what television meant to (and did to) people in the 1950s. All through the series there were woven into...