Jackie Gleason Was A 1950s Nightmare

Jackie Gleason Was A 1950s Nightmare
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Colossal Facts About Jackie Gleason, “The Great One”
July 30, 2024 |
Dancy Mason
Colossal Facts About Jackie Gleason, “The Great One”
Thanks to his hit show The Honeymooners , comedian Jackie Gleason turned into a 1950s American idol almost overnight. But Gleason’s perverse life behind the scenes would have made his fans furious.
1. He Has A Complex Reputation
You might think comedian Jackie Gleason earned the nickname “ The Great One ” thanks to his enormous legacy on sit-coms like The Honeymooners and comedy in general. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead, Gleason actually got this outsized reputation through much more disturbing means—a horrible temper, a bottomless penchant for partying, and some very bad bedroom behavior. If you want to know real story of “Ralph Kramden,” brace yourself and keep reading.
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2. His Childhood Was Tragic
To be fair, Jackie Gleason got a horrific start on life.  Born in Brooklyn in 1915, his parents struggled to make ends meet, and Gleason remembers his father working long nights writing insurance policies. To make matters worse, in 1919 his older brother Clement perished from meningitis, leaving Gleason as the only child in the family.
Soon though, what was left of this family would betray him.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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3. His Father Dealt Him Dirty
When Jackie wasn’t even 10 years old, his father abandoned the family—and he did it in a spectacularly hurtful way. Just before Christmas in 1925, the elder Gleason threw out every family photo he was in, then quit his job and skipped town, leaving Jackie’s mother to scramble for work to support her now tiny brood. But Jackie scrambled too.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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4. He Was An Attention Hog
For the next years, Jackie threw himself into helping his mother, quitting school before graduating. However, before he did, he realized how much he loved the theater—or at least how much he loved people watching him. After a class play ignited his interested in performing, he got a job as a master of ceremonies at a theater and began doing jokes on amateur nights at local joints.
Even then, though, there was a very dark side to his jolly antics.
BNapoleon1986, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
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5. He  Stole  People’s Jokes
Teenaged Jackie was trying to make it in a tough business, and many of his comic sets around this time crashed and burned. Only, he was hiding a more disturbing secret. Ready to “make it” by any means necessary, there’s evidence that he full-on pilfered his jokes from more established comedians like Milton Berle .
Still, he started gaining attention all the same. But Karma has a horrible way of biting you back tenfold, as Gleason was about to learn.
Macfadden Publications page 2, Wikimedia Commons
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6. His Mother Got Terrifyingly Sick
When Gleason was just 19, his mother began experiencing a nasty health problem. She had a carbuncle, a boil brought on by a bacterial infection, on her neck and didn’t know what to do about it. Although the answer is “Go to a doctor,” Jackie’s mother instead asked her son to lance it for her.
It was an amateur option, if a cheap one. It led to a nightmare.
Florida Memory, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
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7. He  Killed  His Mother
Tragically, Gleason’s stint as a dutiful medicine man was a horrific bust. The boy’s efforts ended up giving his mother sepsis, and she passed from the complications in 1935. Yes, you could say that Gleason put his own mother in the grave. Somehow, it got so much worse. With his mother gone, Gleason was completely on his own, and only had 36 cents to his name.
His desperate times called for desperate measures. They also brought about his lasting stardom.
movie studio, Wikimedia Commons
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8. He Refused Help
Now, Jackie did have one person he could turn to: His first girlfriend Julie Dennehy, who offered up her own home for him to stay in. Except the stubborn Gleason didn’t want to rely on her. instead, he claimed he was going to go to the city to make it big—likely ending their relationship in the process.
For once in his life, though, luck was on Gleason’s side. After rooming with a friend, he got himself a booking agent and became a professional comedian at long last. His next move was iconic.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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9. He Gave Brutal Insults
Eventually, Gleason began working at New York’s famous Club 18, where patrons regularly came in hoping that evening’s comedian would roast them to charred bits. For Gleason, who had begun to develop a brassy, coarse persona, it was perfect.
At one point, after spotting the ice skater Sonja Henie in the audience, he handed her an ice cube and said, “Okay, now do something.” This soon attracted the attention of all the right people.
Dell Publishing, 1944, Wikimedia Commons
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10. He Became A Film Star
While Gleason was working at Club 18 and making the rounds at other New York stages, none other than Jack Warner of Warner Brothers Studios saw him perform and knew he had something special on his hands. Warner quickly offered Gleason a tidy little contract at his company. Soon, Gleason was in supporting roles opposite starts like Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan.
For the first time, Gleason had money and some semblance of stability. So you know he had to go  blow  it all up.
Wikimedia Commons
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11. He Had A Problem
Around this time, Gleason’s private life was ruinous.  He had become quite the partier while running around the club circuit, and he could put back more liquid than even the Hollywood crowd could believe. Even so, as one of his pals put it, he could also spend money “faster than he could soak up booze”. But that wasn’t all.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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12. He Was A Hotel Nightmare
To go along with these penchants of drink and dollars, Gleason also became notorious for throwing all-night ragers—so much so that his regular hotel soundproofed the walls of his signature room to spare their other guests. It wasn’t conducive to a healthy life, but Gleason had more dysfunction in store.
Walter Albertin, photographer, Wikimedia Commons
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13. He Met A Dancer
Just as Gleason was hitting the big times, he fell in love with dancer Genevieve Halford. Halford was beautiful, vivacious, and could likely keep up with her hard-partying boyfriend—at least at first. After a time, Halford somewhat understandably wanted to settle down, and began pressing Gleason to marry her.
Well, she didn’t get the response she wanted.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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14. His Girlfriend Manipulated Him
Instead of getting down on one knee, Gleason carefully avoided the whole situation. Then his girlfriend got a manipulative revenge. Halford insisted she would simply date other men until they married, and duly followed through. One night, Gleason glimpsed her sitting with another man, front row, while he was performing at one of his shows.
Now Halford got the reaction she was looking for.
NBC Television, Wikimedia Commons
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15. He Was Forced Into Marriage
Halford’s careful presentation of herself on a date at one of Gleason’s performances was a stroke of genius, and the comedian took notice. After his set ended, he went over to her table and proposed to her, right in front of the date. They ended up marrying in September 1936.
Was Halford’s plan diabolical? Yes. Did it work? You bet. But oh boy, did they live to regret it.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
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16. He Tried To Be A Family Man
Although Halford and Gleason had two daughters together by the early 1940s, Geraldine and Linda, their home wasn’t the picture of domestic bliss. Maybe you guessed that already, though. See, Halford might have thought that practically forcing Gleason to become a husband would calm him down…but she was very wrong.
Miami…

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