The Honeymooners - The Lost Episodes, Vol. 1
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List Price: $14.98
Features
• Black & White
• DVD-Video
• NTSC
In Theaters : 01 October, 1955
DVD Release : 24 July, 2001 |
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The Honeymooners - The Lost Episodes, Vol. 1 description
Jackie Gleason fans will get a bang-zoom out of this collection of three rarely seen (as opposed to "the classic 39," which true brother Raccoons can recite chapter and verse) Honeymooners episodes that aired in 1953 as part of The Jackie Gleason Show. "Letter to the Boss," "Suspense," and "Dinner Guest" were among the so-called "lost episodes" that had not been seen since their original broadcast until their discovery in Gleason's personal archives in the 1980s. While technically crude, they offer a funny and fascinating early glimpse at a classic sitcom and these beloved characters. Bus driver Ralph Kramden, Gleason's signature role, is even more of a volcanic blowhard than in the series. In one shocking, pre-PC moment in "Suspense," he bellows to Audrey Meadows's long-suffering but devoted Alice, "For the first time in our marriage, I'm going to beat you up." One longs for the tender romance of "One of these days, Alice, pow, right in the kisser." The misunderstanding, a time-honored sitcom plot device, fuels the two best episodes. In "Letter," Ralph thinks he has been fired from the bus company after nine years, and he writes a scathing missive to his boss ("You dirty bum"). When he learns he's actually been promoted, he frantically tries to retrieve the letter. In "Suspense," he believes Alice is going to kill him after he overhears her rehearsing for a play. Art Carney's Ed Norton, one of the great TV buddies, shines in the otherwise routine "Dinner Guest" as he demonstrates how to mambo, while Ralph clumsily tries to curry favor with his boss. This DVD also contains a bonus compilation segment, "Ralph Kramden's Greatest Schemes." --Donald Liebenson |
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The Honeymooners - The Lost Episodes, Vol. 1 Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Great concept, disappointingly executed
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| THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW was a very successful variety show in the 1950s, and its finest moments were occasional skits known as "The Honeymooners," relating the tragicomic misadventures of a frustrated blue-collar worker, Ralph Kramden, his wife Alice, and their similarly downscale neighbors, Ed and Trixie Norton. Having run these wildly popular skits for years, THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW was "officially" discontinued for one year in the late '50s so that "The Honeymooners" could be filmed as a sitcom. Most of us draw our memories of "The Honeymooners" from reruns of that short-lived (39-episode) sitcom. THE HONEYMOONERS--THE LOST EPISODES is the first of a long DVD series collecting "Honeymooners" skits from THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW before "The Honeymooners" became a sitcom. These "Honeymooners" skits are necessarily cruder than the later sitcom most of us know so well. They were produced for live television, so no scenes could be reshot if anything went wrong. They were just part of an hour-long show, so they lacked the sitcom's rehearsal time. And Jackie Gleason & co. were just discovering how to make "The Honeymooners" work best -- its best trademark conventions hadn't set in yet. Moreover, unlike the later sitcom, these skits weren't filmed at all, because this was live television. Instead, they were recorded in a crude precursor of videotape. So THE LOST EPISODES don't look nearly as good and aren't written or acted as well as "the classic 39" sitcom. But they're STILL brilliant, and offer much insight as to how the mature HONEYMOONERS came to be. Unfortunately, the makers didn't put together this DVD well. They don't even bother to explain that these "episodes" are skits from live television, which would help viewers understand why they're so crude. The menu is confusing, there's little rhyme or reason to the sequencing, and only about half as many minutes of programming is included as a one-sided DVD will hold. Nonetheless, true HONEYMOONERS fans will want to see this. Oh, didn't I mention?: THE HONEYMOONERS remains probably the best American sitcom EVER. And THE LOST EPISODES are inspired too -- even if they're only presented as scraps. |
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