Jackie Gleason is remembered as one of the most iconic stars of the 20th century, but
underneath his jocular, smiling public demeanor, he dealt with considerable inner turmoil.
These are the tragic details about Jackie Gleason.
Jackie Gleason was born on February 26, 1916, to parents Herbert Walter Gleason and Mae
"Maisie" Kelly, who hailed from County Cork in Ireland. Curiously enough, while Gleason
was born Herbert John Gleason, he was baptized as John Herbert Gleason. The nickname "Jackie"
was given to him by his mother, and it stuck. Gleason grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which
was a very impoverished area at the time.
According to Gleason's website, young Jackie knew that he wanted to be an actor from the
age of six when his father used to take him to see matinee silent films and vaudeville
performances. Unfortunately, the theater visits would be the only good memory that Gleason
would have of his father. Herbert Gleason would walk out on his family when Jackie was
only nine years old. Jackie Gleason never saw his father again.
Unfortunately, Herbert Gleason's abandonment wasn't the only tragedy that would befall
the Gleason family. Jackie Gleason actually had an older brother named Clement, who was
a frail and sickly child. This led to the boy dying of spinal meningitis when young
Jackie was only three. Once Jackie's father walked out, his mother, Maisie, became even
more protective of Jackie. Gleason would later recall how his desperate mother kept him inside
at all times as a child, telling an interviewer:
"I could never go out on the street and play with the other kids. I used to watch them
with my face pressed against the window. I think that's how I developed my 'poor soul'
look."
Between her oldest son's death and her husband's abandonment, Maisie Gleason couldn't bear
to lose her last family member. Sadly, Gleason's mother died at the age of 50 — leaving the
19-year-old Gleason alone, homeless, and with only 36 cents in his pocket.
The Gleason family had always been poor, but after his mother's death, Jackie was utterly
destitute. He needed money, and he needed it soon. As noted by MeTV, Gleason's then-girlfriend's
parents did offer to take him in, but Gleason turned them down. He managed to get a roommate
in the city and started taking whatever work he could find.
First, he worked some minor gigs as a carnival barker and a daredevil driver, then as an
emcee in a Brooklyn club. But what really helped Gleason's career was playing various
gigs in some of the seedier nightclubs across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. According
to Entertainment Weekly, Gleason flopped badly in stand-up. Still, he did better as a table-hopping
comic, which let him interact directly with an audience.
These entertainment gigs eventually attracted the attention of talent agents who could land
him small movie roles and later parts in Broadway musical comedies. By the time he was 34, Gleason
had earned his own TV variety show, The Jackie Gleason Show.
Before taking the role of legendary pool player "Minnesota Fats" in the classic movie The
Hustler, Gleason learned to play pool in real life. As noted by film historian Dina Di Mambro,
when Gleason was still a boy, he often tried to pick up odd jobs around his Brooklyn neighborhood
to earn extra money to bring home to his mother. As they were living in abject poverty, they
needed whatever money they could make between the two of them.
The 12-year-old Jackie managed to find work in a pool hall, where his job was racking
up balls for neighborhood toughs who came in to play. While working in the pool hall,
Gleason learned to play the game himself and managed to become quite the pool hustler at
a very young age. When it came to filming The Hustler, Gleason didn't need any stunt
doubles to do those trick pool shots — they were all Gleason himself. And director Robert
Rossen always positioned the camera to show off Gleason's excellent pool skills to the
audience.
Over his lifetime, Jackie Gleason had three wives. The first was a dancer, Genevieve Halford,
with whom Gleason had his two daughters, Geraldine and Linda. Although Gleason and Halford were
legally married for 34 years, their relationship was extremely fraught. Halford hoped to have
a normal, comfortable family life, but Gleason was far more interested in going out with
friends, drinking, and partying. The two of them separated and reconciled multiple times
over.
According to The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, during one of their separations, Gleason also
carried on a relationship with another dancer named Marilyn Taylor. He wanted to marry Taylor,
but Halford was a devout Catholic and refused a divorce. Marilyn Taylor went on to marry
someone else. Halford eventually came around and divorced Gleason in 1970. Only ten days
after his divorce from Genevieve Halford, Gleason married a country club secretary named
Beverley McKittrick, whom he had met in 1968.
However, in 1973, Gleason learned that the widowed Marilyn Taylor had moved to Miami.
He quickly filed for divorce from McKittrick and married Taylor once the divorce was finalized.
Taylor and Gleason remained married for the rest of Gleason's life.
Jackie Gleason was an extremely heavy drinker and a hard partier in his day. In fact, Gleason's
parties could get so out-of-control that one of his hotels had to soundproof his suite
to prevent the rest of the guests from being disturbed by Gleason's partying. And when
he had been hitting the bottle particularly hard, he wasn't noted as being a fun or affable
drunk, but has been described as petty, mean-spirited, and nasty. Gleason was also known to drink
while he was at work and on set.
As noted by Gleason's biographer, William Henry III, Jackie Gleason seldom spent much
time with his family during the holidays. Apparently, he would only spend about half
an hour with his wife, Genevieve Halford, and young daughters on Christmas before going
out to celebrate the day with his drinking buddies. Gleason's alcoholism and carousing
certainly seem to be what really threw a wrench in his first marriage, leading to several
separations and reconciliations before the ultimate divorce.
Gleason was a brilliant performer, but he wasn't exactly the easiest person to work
with. Gleason always had high salary demands and outrageous prerequisites, like having
the longest limousine. Apparently, Gleason even insisted that CBS move his show to Miami
so he could golf year-round. He wasn't any better when performing, either. Gleason, an
outstanding improviser, hated rehearsing, feeling that he and his co-stars would give
better reactions if they didn't seem so practiced.
His Honeymooners cast loathed Gleason's methods and were forced to rehearse without him. As
noted by Fame10, co-star Joyce Randolph admitted that she would, quote, "break out into cold
sweats" right before filming. This was because Gleason often wouldn't read the script until
the day of the show and sometimes wouldn't even give it to his co-stars until hours before
they were supposed to go on.
Gleason's drinking was also a huge problem on set. He was known to show up either drunk
or openly drinking while working. And the cast and crew could never be sure what his
temperament might be. Gleason's drinking caused him to have abrupt mood swings — charming
and pleasant one minute and screaming and offensive the next.
"You're gonna do the mambo! You're gonna do the mambo but it's gonna be in the moon!"
He might have been a show-biz genius, but Gleason probably didn't make as many memorable
shows or movies as he could have just because others in the industry found him so exasperating.
Jackie Geason and Art Carney — as Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton of The Honeymooners
– are among the most iconic duos in 20th-century television. However, despite their off-the-charts
chemistry together on screen, the two actors didn't actually get along well in real life.
One reason why the two disliked one another was the speculation that Gleason felt threatened
by Carney's comedic talents and prominent acting career.
According to The Morning Call, Gleason, at one point, told actor Orson Welles just how
insecure he really was regarding his co-star, saying:
"It's like on my show when they laugh at my subordinate Art Carney, that dirty so and
so. I smile on the outside, but you should see my insides."
In return, Art Carney was said to dislike Gleason's lack of professionalism and refusal
to take the craft of acting seriously.
"Mr. Cramden?"
"Hey there!"
After The Honeymooners ended in 1956, Carney and Gleason swore they would never work together
again. Ultimately, they broke that promise, but the two didn't work together until 1985
for the crime-comedy TV movie Izzy and Moe.
The iconic cartoon show The Flintstones was obviously very heavily influenced by The Honeymooners.
Nothing was blatantly stolen from The Honeymooners, but the lead characters' mannerisms and personalities
were too alike to ignore. Both shows featured a heavyset, loud-mouthed husband with a dim-witted
best friend who regularly came up with ludicrous get-rich-quick schemes that were always squashed
by their more prudent wives.
Both the husband and the best friend characters were also avid bowlers and belonged to a men's
club whose members wore ridiculous-looking animal hats.
"You haven't forgotten our date tonight, have you dear?”
"But Wilma, baby, sweetheart, tonight there's a little bowling thing."
The Flintstones was so similar to The Honeymooners that Gleason, at one point, considered suing
Hanna-Barbera, but his publicist ultimately talked him out of it, saying:
"Do you want to go down in history as the man who killed Fred Flintstone?"
Gleason backed off. Incidentally, The Flintstones would go on to last much longer than The Honeymooners.
While The Honeymooners ended after 39 episodes, The Flintstones had multiple seasons and spawned
several spin-offs, TV specials, and movies.
By the mid-'80s, Jackie Gleason's health was on the decline, and he thought he was done
making movies. But director Garry Marshall had other ideas. Marshall was dead set on
Gleason starring in his latest film, Nothing in Common. Gleason was to star alongside Tom
Hanks, playing Hanks' bad-tempered, self-absorbed, curmudgeonly father. Gleason was reluctant
to take on the role, fearing the strain that doing another movie might put on his health.
But then Marshall reminded Gleason that his last theatrical film credit was Smokey and
The Bandit III in 1983 — a film widely regarded as awful and with highly negative reviews.
Marshall needled Gleason, suggesting that he might want to reconsider letting that be
the last movie on his record. That was enough for Gleason.
He might have been in poor health, but he said yes to appearing in Nothing In Common,
which was officially his final film, released in 1986. It received mixed reviews overall,
but Gleason's performance was met with praise from critics. The movie has a 57 percent rating
on Rotten Tomatoes – certainly an improvement over Smokey and The Bandit III.
Jackie Gleason died on June 24, 1987, at the premature age of 71. Gleason had been suffering
from multiple health issues for years but kept it a secret from the public. Nevertheless,
his years of hard partying, voracious alcohol consumption, and extravagant eating inevitably
caught up with him. Although Gleason had always been overweight, his lifestyle choices led
to vein inflammation, diabetes, and hemorrhoids.
However, the ultimate cause of Gleason's death was colon cancer. Although he tried to keep
his condition private, it became obvious to many that Gleason was seriously ill as time
went on. Even Gleason himself couldn't ignore the fact that the end was probably coming
soon. A year before his death, he privately admitted to one of his daughters, quote, "I
won't be around much longer." In an interview with Gleason's stepson, Craig Horwich, Horwich
fondly recalled his stepfather:
"He wanted to be at the head of the table with as many people and all the wonderful
food and fun that came with it. But then he also had a great pleasure of reading and listening
to music and solitude."
Gleason will be remembered as a complicated, often problematic, and volatile person, but
his legacy as a brilliant performer with legendary achievements will live on.