Among the things he wanted to do was to enjoy himself, and he did that mightily: His huge appetite for food -he could eat five lobsters at a sitting -sometimes pushed his weight up toward 300 pounds. The surprise with Jackie Gleason isn't that he didn't make more wonderful movies or TV shows but that anybody of any merit put up with him at all. Gleason and Carney also made a television movie, Izzy and Moe (1985), about an unusual pair of historic Federal prohibition agents in New York City who achieved an unbeatable arrest record with highly successful techniques including impersonations and humor, which aired on CBS in 1985. Jackie Gleason Biography Jackie Gleason's Grave JACKIE GLEASON DIES AT 71 - The Washington Post ", Neil Simon, who wrote for one of the almost infinite number of Gleason's variety shows in the '50s, said he left TV for play-writing because "I did not want to become a middle-aged man waiting for the phone to ring so I could go to work writing gags for some abusive, unappreciative s--- like Jackie Gleason. In The Times, Walter Goodman found it largely ''sloppy stuff.''. The two men watched the film for an hour before Gleason appeared on screen. We rehearsed behind his back with someone else reading his part. It was a box office flop. Ralph Kramden says to Alice "One of these days, one of these days POW right in the kisser". By then, his television stardom, his other acting assignments and his recording work had combined to make him ''the hottest performer in all show business'' in Life magazine's appraisal. His thirst for glamour led him to have CBS build him a circular mansion in Peekskill, N.Y., costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Classic ''Honeymooners'' episodes were shown over and over. Gleason kicked off the 19661967 season with new, color episodes of The Honeymooners. But it's not enough.'' His real name was Herbert John Gleason, and he was born Feb. 26, 1916, in Brooklyn, the son of Herbert Gleason, a poorly paid insurance clerk, and Mae Kelly Gleason. The bus-driver skits proved so popular that in 1955 he expanded them into ''The Honeymooners,'' a filmed CBS series. In 1969 William Friedkin wanted to cast Gleason as "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971), but because of the poor reception of Gigot and Skidoo, the studio refused to offer Gleason the lead; he wanted it. [50][51] Gleason and his wife informally separated again in 1951.
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