"The Great Gleason Express" 8/3/1964. When Jackie Gleason moved his show to Miami Beach he Chartered a train from New York to Florida to take his entire crew and partied all the way there. www.wolfsonarch...
I was on that train, 7 years old at the time. My dad was the assistant to the producer for the show in Miami Beach. I don't remember much except that it was quite a party!
In the book by Audrey Meadows "Love Alice", she talked about the train. All the June Taylor dancers were on it including Mercedes Ellington Duke Ellington's granddaughter. She was the first and only black woman on the team. The train made stops along the way to greet fans. She told Gleason that she was nervous about getting off the train at certain southern stops and was planning on staying aboard during them. He told her no she was going to greet fans and to just stand next to him at all times. This is the first time I've seen footage and yes at one of the stops you can see her standing next to him. What a great guy! Makes me admire him even more as if that were possible.
Yes, she said in an interviewsthat at one particular point she was heckled, and he took her arm and held her right next to him for the entire photo shoot (or interview session, whatever it was). She said, "I made up my mind about him then, and we were friends for life."
I remember my dad always watching the Jackie Gleason Show in the early ‘60s...I think it was Saturday nights after Lawrence Welk? I was usually just drying off from my Saturday bath and on the floor with my toy planes and wondered what the heck my dad was laughing at on the TV...
Me, too! My Dad taught me about what funny was. Gleason, Dean & Jerry, Stooges, Danny Kaye, Abbott & Costello, we watched them all together. All in glorious black & white.
What fab footage ! Bet there was never a dull moment on that long train ride ! THANKS for uploading this bodacious "blast from the past" ! I remember watching as a kid in the 60s Jackie's show that was taped in Miami ! He's always close each episode saying the Miami audiences were the best in the world ! :-)
This happens 20 days before I was born in 1964. Discovered Gleason thanks to the "lost" Honeymooners episodes. God, The Great One indeed. "Sam, how bout a little traveling music!" ...
Think about this - the guys playing on the train are playing "Hello, Dolly!" which had been the #1 song in America back in February. Now it's an oldie, a style of music so far from the American charts that it seems ridiculous it was ever #1, smash hit, on the radio every single hour on every top ten American radio station. But back then, if a song was a hit, the whole world was singing it the next day and every band learned it and played it.
When Television was in its infancy there were pioneers who catapulted the “new” medium into what it has become today. Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Desi and Lucy; (just to name the early chance takers) …THEY were the “Babe Ruth’s “ of this voyage into an unknown … 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃…
And while all this was happening, James T. Aubrey, CBS' ruthless president (he wasn't known as "The Smiling Cobra" for nothing) was furious. He didn't want Jackie to have all that publicity, and, quite frankly, wanted him off the network....because he loathed him [and Jackie felt the same way about Aubrey]. But Gleason had the #1 show on Saturday nights, and Aubrey couldn't do a thing about it. You see, Aubrey had his own ideas on what stars to cultivate, and programs to schedule {he didn't care for Lucille Ball either, who once said of Aubrey, "I cannot live with that man!"}- he preferred working with production companies like Filmways and scheduling their programs, including "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES", "PETTICOAT JUNCTION" and "GREEN ACRES". He also scheduled three programs for the 1964-'65 season produced by an old pal of his, Keefe Brasselle {as a thank you for Brasselle calling off a mob hit, after his dating and rough treatment of a mob boss' daughter}- without formal pilot films ("THE REPORTER", "THE CARA WILLIAMS SHOW", "THE BAILEYS OF BALBOA"). All three were off the air by the end of the season- and Aubrey was out as the network's president in February 1965. Ironically, it was because he attended Jackie's birthday bash in Miami- and his later appearance at another "wilder" party, where he roughed up the daughter of a CBS affiliate station manager- who notified them, "Either do something about this, or I'll blow the whistle on him!", that he got the ax. Aubrey was a "bad boy"- yet he doubled CBS' profits over a five year period, which was why they were reluctant to get rid of him until the bitter end.
Agreed. Gleason's show lost something when it moved to Florida. Performing the Honeymooners in the gargantuan Miami Beach Auditorium was a mistake. The venue destroyed any sense of intimacy that the show enjoyed when it originated in the more confined studios available in NY.
March of 2022 - You can spend the night on this refurbished (parked) train that is now at the the Galveston RR Museum. I was given a tour on it a few weeks ago. It sleeps 10 and cost about $1,000.00 for the night. Very cool. You can find more info on the Galveston RR Museum's web-site. The pictures on the web-site don't do it justice in my option, it as super cool in person.
no ones appetite for life was larger than Jackie Gleasons...chain smoking and prodigious eating took a back seat to his legendary ability to consume alcohol....his photographic memory compensated for his intense refusal to rehearse...limiting himself to just a single walk through .....claiming rehearsal made his performance stale......on the immortal Honeymooners...as an example. during a typical night of drinking with Sinatra at the famous NY watering hall..Toots Shores..it was decided to take a dinner break...so jackie called a limousine to take them to the restaurant...the restaurant?.....45 feet away!!......lol....Truly One Of A Kind..was Jackie Gleason.
Yes, the whole train. All the passengers were employees or guests of the show. Sadly, I saw the caboose of that train (Jackies Car) in a local train yard in Miami rusting away. He used that car many times as he would not fly in an airplane. My dad accompanied him to two movie sets via train, one in Canada and one in California, Long train rides. Some of the shows made in Miami can be found on DVD at Amazon under the title "Color Honeymooners". These shows are a big step up from the black & white apartment set shows filmed in New York. Art Carney is hilarious as well.
This is how people HAD fun! Now second had smoke, of course everyone is an alcoholic, and of course let's not forget that all the offensive language, what joke we are TODAY!
Anybody know where You can watch Episodes of the Miami Show. (Streaming) ??? Haven't been able to find anything, only little clips. It's such a waste that it would just sit somewhere for years without People having access to it. The last time I've syeen any Episodes was in 81 and 82, some channel was playing it most nights,bad well as the Honeymooners (which is kind of easy to find now.
Some of the shows made in Miami can be found on DVD at Amazon under the title "Color Honeymooners". These shows are a big step up from the black & white apartment set shows filmed in New York. Art Carney is hilarious as well. Amazon has the Color Honeymooners "Collection One" DVD with a 9 part multi-episode show of the Trip Around the World. These are originally filmed in color in Miami and the sets are fantastic. FUNNY STUFF!!!
@@joeambrose3260 You don't hear that terrible noise the first few seconds? That's why I put the link in. You skip to where the normal sound kicks in. Dat's it.
This is how people HAD fun! Now second had smoke, of course everyone is an alcoholic, and of course let's not forget that all the offensive language, what joke we are TODAY!
This is how people HAD fun! Now second had smoke, of course everyone is an alcoholic, and of course let's not forget that all the offensive language, what joke we are TODAY!
