The Honeymooners: 'Homina-Homina' & Behind-The-Scenes Shockers

6. THE KRAMDENS’ APARTMENT WAS INTENTIONALLY DEPRESSING.

Gleason designed the sparsely furnished Kramden apartment set to resemble the Chauncey Street tenement he grew up in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Theoretically, the Kramdens could have outfitted their flat with a few luxuries like the Nortons did, since Ralph and Ed made the same $62 per week salary (approximately $549 in today’s dollars). But Ed bought a lot of his furnishings on credit, which Ralph was dead set against.

Meadows received sacks of mail every week from concerned viewers containing decorative aprons, curtains, and knick-knacks so that she could spruce up her dreary living quarters.

7. THERE WERE NO DRESS REHEARSALS.

Gleason didn’t believe in rehearsals, mainly because he preferred his performance to be fresh and spontaneous, and partially because he preferred to spend his afternoons relaxing with friends at Toots Shor’s famous Manhattan watering hole. He usually did one run-through per script, with a minimal amount of crew on hand since he also wanted the cameramen and stagehands to hear and react to the jokes for the first time on filming nights.

Meadows, Carney, and Joyce Randolph preferred to go into each performance more prepared, so they would rehearse on their own with someone else reading Ralph’s lines. Gleason would occasionally forget some dialogue and would signal his distress by patting his stomach. That was a signal his co-stars (usually Carney) to ad lib enough to allow Gleason to regain his composure and continue on with the scene. Meadows also used body language—side-long glances, a jutting elbow from a hand on her hip—to discretely guide Gleason to his onstage “mark” when necessary.

The Great One also didn’t believe in retakes, so most bloopers were left in and papered over.

For instance, when the Handy Housewife Helper fell apart while Ralph and Norton were preparing for their infomercial in “Better Living Through Television.”

8. THE SERIES HAD SOME A-LIST FANS.

Cary Grant, the very definition of a dashing and debonair Hollywood leading man, made a point of approaching Meadows on the Paramount lot one afternoon during The Honeymooners’s summer hiatus. As she recalled in her 1994 autobiography, Love, Alice, Meadows was flattered to have one of filmdom’s biggest stars so anxious to meet her and was just slightly crestfallen moments later to find out it was because he was a Honeymooners fan and wanted her to talk to Jackie Gleason about allowing him to do a guest spot.

“I could be Ed Norton’s assistant in the sewer,” he suggested. Meadows couldn’t picture the dapper Grant wallowing in the muck and replied, “But those sewer workers are exposed to all those rats and all that filth!” No worries, Grant assured her: “I’ve worked in Hollywood for years. I’ve seen worse filth and worked with bigger rats.” (Meadows would later co-star with Grant in That Touch of Mink, which was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two.)

9. JACKIE GLEASON BRIEFLY CONSIDERED SUING THE FLINTSTONES.

There’s no denying that Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones was heavily “influenced” by The Honeymooners: the primetime cartoon series focused on two couples who were neighbors, the main character was heavy-set and his nasal-voiced wife could be counted on to deflate his dreams of getting rich quick. Fred Flintstone and best friend/next door neighbor Barney Rubble were both members of the same lodge and bowling team, à la Ralph and Ed. Gleason noticed the similarities between the two shows and very briefly considered suing Hanna-Barbera, but decided against any legal action when his publicist asked him, “Do you want to go down in history as The Man Who Killed Fred Flintstone?”

While The Flintstones simply hinted at The Honeymooners, Warner Bros. was more blatant with their cartoon tribute. Their 1956 animated short was not only entitled The Honey-Mousers, but its main characters were named Ralph Krumden and Ned Morton. Somehow, Gleason got wind of the project after it was completed but before it was released to theaters and insisted on taking a look at it.

Director Robert McKimson dutifully sent him a print and shortly thereafter was told by Gleason (who, according to staff who’d been there for the viewing, had laughed himself silly throughout the episode) to “go ahead and make as many of ‘em as you want.”

10. GLEASON CALLED IT QUITS AFTER JUST ONE SEASON.

For several months after it premiered, The Honeymooners was second only to I Love Lucy in popularity and Gleason was dubbed the “king of Saturday night television.” But in the fall of 1955, rival network NBC moved its popular variety series The Perry Como Show to the 8 p.m. time slot on Saturday nights, and The Honeymooners started losing momentum.

By September 1956, the show had dropped down to number 19 in the Nielsen ratings, and CBS was considering cancellation. Gleason, however, pulled the plug himself after 39 episodes, stating that the writers had exhausted all the possible plots for a half-hour sitcom and he wanted to go out on a high note before the writing suffered.