page_title: The Jackie Gleason Show
section_title: The Honeymooners
hierarchical_section_title: The Jackie Gleason Show / The Honeymooners
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Audrey Meadows and Jackie Gleason as Ralph and Alice Kramden from the television program The Honeymooners.
context_page_description: The Jackie Gleason Show is the name of a series of American network television shows that starred Jackie Gleason, which ran from 1952 to 1970, in various forms.
context_section_description: By far the most memorable and popular of Gleason's characters was blowhard Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, featured originally in a series of Cavalcade skits known as "The Honeymooners", with Pert Kelton as his wife Alice, and Art Carney as his upstairs neighbor Ed Norton. These were so popular that in 1955 Gleason suspended the variety format and filmed The Honeymooners as a regular half-hour sitcom (television's first spin-off), co-starring Carney, Audrey Meadows (who had replaced the blacklisted Kelton after the earlier move to CBS), and Joyce Randolph. Finishing 19th in the ratings, these 39 episodes were subsequently rerun constantly in syndication, often five nights a week, with the cycle repeating every two months for decades. They are probably the most familiar body of work from 1950s television with the exception of I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
  The show's original variety format and title returned in September 1956 and continued until June 1957. Then, in October 1958, Gleason debuted a half-hour version of The Jackie Gleason Show, with Buddy Hackett as a sidekick, but it was short-lived, cancelled in January 1959.
caption: Gleason and Audrey Meadows as Ralph and Alice Kramden, 1956.
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