THE COLOR HONEYMOONERS (2008) – Baby, they’re not the greatest

(Time-Life Video has released a DVD set of episodes from the 1960’s era of The Jackie Gleason Show. Although I’m a long-time Gleason fan, I have no desire to purchase the set, even though it contains [as trumpeted in the DVD’s PR] “seven ‘Honeymooners’ episodes not seen in 50 years!”

That’s because I’ve seen The Color Honeymooners, a set released in 2008 that showcased a nine-episode arc in which the Kramdens and the Nortons — portrayed in the ’60s by Gleason, Art Carney, Sheila MacRae, and Jane Kean — go on an unexpected trip to Europe. These eps were actually my introduction to “The Honeymooners” when I was a kid — but viewing them decades later, I found they hadn’t aged nearly as well as the “Classic 39” episodes from 1955-56.

Here’s my review of The Color Honeymooners. [NOTE: If you are interested in purchasing the Time-Life set, it contains “Honeymooners” segments that are from the same era but completely separate from those on the Color set.)

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These segments from Jackie Gleason’s CBS variety show in 1966 are hour-long, musical (!) “Honeymooners” segments in which the Kramdens and the Nortons win a trip to Europe and have various adventures. (These are actually color remakes of musical episodes that were performed on Gleason’s variety show a decade before.) While I enjoyed these episodes well enough, I nevertheless get the impression that this is where Gleason’s comedic style, as with Lucille Ball’s in the 1960’s, started to calcify.

The black-and-white “Honeymooners” seems more “authentic,” if you will — you really get the sense that this is a couple barely making ends meet. By contrast, in the color eps, you can see Gleason and Carney really playing to the crowd. Every time a familiar bit of shtick comes, the audience goes crazy — a precursor of the whooping and hollering yahoos you hear on live-audience sitcoms these days.

And in the B&W eps, Gleason is far more believable as a pale, manic, barely-getting-by bus-driver. It’s kind of hard to identify with the Kramdens when each episode begins with a splashy production number, and once-pale Ralph sports a Miami tan.

Lastly, some of the writing is a bit open-ended, such as the episode where Kramden and Norton fall off their cruise ship and end up stranded at sea. (SPOILER ALERT)  In one scene, they’re in a lifeboat; in the next and final scene, there’s a quick wrap-up where their rescue is barely mentioned. They get all sorts of press coverage for their European trip and hardly anyone even notices a rescue at sea?

As replacements for Joyce Randolph (as Trixie Norton) and Audrey Meadows (as Alice Kramden), respectively, Jane Kean is acceptable enough, but Sheila MacRae is wildly off the mark. She’s not nearly the non-pushover that Meadows was, playing Alice far too much for pathos. That works in scenes such as the one where Alice befriends an Italian child, but not when she has to stand up to Ralph. (An unintended laugh comes at the capper of one of the episodes, where Gleason tries to do a “Baby, you’re the greatest!” moment and can barely get his arms around the full-figured MacRae.)

This is nit-picking, I know, especially for die-hard “Honeymooners” completists who want everything they can get their hands on. (The familiar character traits still earn laughs, as when Ed Norton [Carney] comes back from a visit to the Roman Colosseum and tells Ralph, “Don’t bother going there — the place is falling apart!”) Still, some of these sore points make the Color Honeymooners run a distant second to the “Classic 39” in terms of writing, acting, and production.