Shiela Macrae as Alice??? Jane Kean as Trixie??? Where's Audrey & Joyce?
When Jackie Gleason decided to move his CBS hour long show to Miami in 1968, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph did not want to leave the East Coast. Jackie once told TV Guide he telephoned Shiela Macrae and got her singer husband, Gordon. Jackie scowled, in his Ralph roar, "Will you get off the line, I want to talk to your wife." Shiela Macrae would be offered the cherished role of Alice Kramden. Flashback: Audrey had to audition twice for the role of Alice. She was rejected the first time because Gleason thought she looked too glamorous for the role of the pauper housewife. Not taking "no" easily, Audrey re-auditioned dressed down and, to our enjoyment and endearment, got the part, replacing Perk Kelton who was banned from TV, suspected by the Mc Carthy commission of being a possibke communist sympathizer. The third Alice, Shiela Macrae was hired over the phone. Jane Kean was reportedly referred by her William Morris agent. Unfortunately, the ladies who played Ralph and Ed's wives were never fully accepted by TV viewers. The color musical The Jackie Gleason Show: Honeymooners folded after two seasons. The (new) Jackie Gleason Show took on a revamped diverse sketch comedy format (Reginald Van Gleason III, The Poor Soul, Joe the Bartender with Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim. this time less Carney, Macrae and Kean ...no Honeymooner skits). A similar formst, whichc included the original cast and The Honeymooners skits, had been brosdcast on CBS, live from NYC, on Saturday Nights four years prior (remember Charlie Bracken, the loudmouth?).

In the late 70's, Jackie taped three Honeymooners specials for ABC with the original cast in New York, attempting to revive the spark of the original series which began on the now defunct Du Mont network and moved to CBS. In the psychedellic era of Laugh In and Sonny & Cher, the Kramdens and Nortons, with Audrey amd Joyce returning to their 50's origin roles, along with Art and Jackie, could not garner appreciable ratings, not even making the top 20. ABC ordered no further Honeymooner episodes. The

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