Jackie Gleason Movies

Producer and director Otto Preminger reportedly experimented with LSD in the late 60's, which inspired him to make this notorious comedy in which Jackie Gleason plays Tony, a mid-level gangster and former hired killer not very happy with his life. He bickers a lot with his wife Flo (Carol Channing) and isn't sure what to make of his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay), especially since she started dating a hippie named Stash (John Phillip Law). Two of Tony's superiors, Angie (Frankie Avalon) and Hechy (Cesar Romero), order him to get arrested, go to prison and once behind bars whack "Blue Chips" Packard (Mickey Rooney). Though he's not pleased with the idea, Tony grudgingly goes along, but once inside, he's accidentally dosed with LSD by counterculture activist the Professor (Austin Pendleton). His consciousness expanded by his trip, Tony leaves his violent lifestyle behind him and with the Professor's help plans an escape after turning the entire prison population on to acid. Certainly your only opportunity to see Groucho Marx play a character named "God," not to mention a supporting cast that includes Slim Pickens, Peter Lawford, George Raft, Frank Gorshin and Arnold Stang, Skidoo is also remembered as the film in which Harry Nilsson sang all the credits. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This charming tale is about a young girl's father and his slightly erratic behavior after sampling a refreshing alcoholic beverage. Although Papa Jack Griffith (Jackie Gleason) never appears to be drunk, his "delicate condition" is well known to his family. His wife is definitely unhappy over his penchant but loves him just the same. He is adored by his youngest daughter, six year old Corinne (Linda Bruhl). When he tries to buy a pony for Corinne, he not only gets the pony but the entire broken down, debt ridden circus as well. This is too much for wife Ambolyn (Glynis Johns), who packs up the kids and heads for her father's house in Texarkana. Jack follows with the entire circus in pursuit to take his loving family back home. He also hoodwinks some local investors to put money into a proposed drug store, thereby circumventing a blue law that forbids the sale of alcohol. Gleason's performance contain many fine moments that run the full spectrum of human emotions and clearly illustrates why he has deservedly been referred to as "The Great One." ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Jackie Gleason plays Gigot, a lumbering but lovable mute Parisian derelict. Shunned by the "respectable" people around him, Gigot is beloved by the children. One of the kids, a little girl, is the melancholy daughter of an insensitive prostitute. Gigot befriends the lonely child and protects her against her wicked parent and the local constabulary. Gigot was heavily edited by 20th Century Fox prior to its release, and subsequently disowned by its director, Gene Kelly. Still, a few hilarious and genuinely poignant moments shine through in this Chaplinesque tour de force for Jackie Gleason, who not only starred but wrote the script and the musical score. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As The Hustler's "Fast" Eddie Felson, Paul Newman created a classic antihero, charismatic but fundamentally flawed, and nobody's role model. A pool player from Oakland, CA, as good as anyone who ever picked up a cue, Eddie has an Achilles' heel: arrogance. It's not enough for him to win: he must force his opponent to acknowledge his superiority. The movie follows Eddie from his match against billiards champ Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) as he falls in love with Sarah (Piper Laurie), an alcoholic would-be writer and sometime prostitute, and falls under the spell of Bert Gordon (George C. Scott), a successful gambler who offers to take Eddie under his wing and teach him how to play in the big time. However, when Sarah joins Eddie and Bert on a trip to Louisville for a high-stakes match with a dandy named Findlay (Murray Hamilton), the consequences prove tragic. Along with a classic performance by Newman, The Hustler also features turns by Scott, Laurie, and Gleason, in a rare dramatic role. Cameos from pool champ Willie Mosconi and boxer Jake LaMotta add to the atmosphere of Harry Horner's grubby production design and Eugen Schüfftan's camerawork. Director Robert Rossen, who had been working in films since 1937, was to direct only one more film, Lilith (1964), before his death in 1966. In 1986, Newman returned to the role of "Fast" Eddie in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, for which he finally earned an Academy Award as Best Actor. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Here's Jackie Gleason at his finest as he plays the hilarious Ralph Kramden, the wacky and beloved bus driver. ~ All Movie Guide

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 the scripts little references to television as a pop-culture force, including the episodes "Ralph Kramden Inc.," "Here Comes the Bride," "The Baby-Sitter," etc. Yet Gleason and his writers also managed to leave room -- in the form of what was perhaps a last, fond look back for all of them -- for newspapers and magazines to figure in people's lives in a major way, as in "On Stage," "Head of the House," and "A Matter of Life and Death." What's even more astonishing is that they did it all in an authentically lower-class/working-class New York setting with accurate, outer-borough dialects and phrases, while, in the process, presenting a last look at the ideal of the great American melting pot. Just as important, they successfully sold it as a hit series to the rest of the country. Even as Milton Berle's popularity declined and television audiences grew beyond the confines of major cities and the Northeast to places that were less accepting of his urban, Jewish, burlesque-derived humor, Gleason and company presented the most urban-focused, New York ethnic comedy this side of The Goldbergs and scored a hit with it for one glowing season. And contrary to popular belief, the series didn't die because of low ratings. The ratings were fine and CBS and the sponsors were happy, but Gleason pulled the plug when he realized that his writers could never equal those 39 scripts used in that golden season. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide