Summary: | Jackie Gleason was 'must-see TV' ages before anyone coined the phrase. In 1952, The Great One' began hosting his own weekly CBS variety series, which included a fanciful array of characters of his creation: aristocratic snob Reginald Van Gleason III, child-like Fenwick Babbit, cocktail-loving Rum Dum, wise-cracking Joe the Bartender, the befuddled Poor Soul, loudmouth Charlie Bratton and, most famously, bombastic bus driver Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners sketches. The special 70th-anniversary commemoration of The Jackie Gleason Show brings together all of the legend's favorite characters in hours of rare material spanning the '50s and '60s when Gleason was a top ten hit on Saturday nights for millions of viewers
|