Jackie Gleason Add to My Celebs Age 71 (passed away Jun. 24th, 1987) Birthday Feb. 26th, 1916 Born in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, USA Height 5' 9 1/2"

Jackie Gleason's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) The Honeymooners Ralph Kramden Dean Martin Celebrity Roast Himself - M… Cavalcade of Stars Host (2) Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine Ralph Kramden The Jackie Gleason Show Jackie Glea… The Herb Shriner Show Jackie Glea…

Main Movie Roles 1986 - Nothing in Common 1983 - Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 1982 - The Toy 1980 - Smokey and the Bandit II 1977 - Mr. Billion 1977 - Smokey and the Bandit 1968 - Skidoo 1962 - Gigot 1961 - The Hustler 1942 - Orchestra Wives 1942 - Lady Gangster 1942 - Springtime in the Rockies 1941 - All Through the Night

NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at IMDB


BIOGRAPHY:

Comedian, actor, composer and conductor, educated in New York public schools. He was a master of ceremonies in amateur shows, a carnival barker, daredevil driver and a disc jockey., and later a comedian in night clubs. By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series of popular and best-selling albums with his orchestra for Capitol Records. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his instrumental compositions include "Melancholy Serenade", "Glamour", "Lover's Rhapsody", "On the Beach" and "To a Sleeping Beauty", among numerous others.


TRIVIA:

• On August 2000, cable television station TvLand unveiled an eight-foot bronze statue of Gleason as Ralph Kramden. The statue was placed in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.
• Inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, 1986.
• In the 1930s, before he ever really made it even in smalltime venues, he was a bartender at a bar in Newark, New Jersey, called the Blue Mirror. He wore his apron high on the chest just like he did as his "Joe the Bartender" character 30 years later on his television show, and he entertained the patrons with his antics, just like "Joe the Bartender." Eventually, he got such a following that the owner gave him a chance at the microphone on stage. The rest, as they say, is history. This was also a time when he actually lived and slept in the back room with the empty bottles, etc. And, of course, it was across the street from a pool hall that he patronized in the afternoons after he was finished cleaning up the Blue Mirror.
• The set of _"The Honeymooners" (1955)_ (qv) show was based on Jackie's childhood home on Chauncey Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant (originally Bushwick) area of Brooklyn, New York. The apartment building is still there and looks very much the same as in Jackie's time.
• Recorded a number of albums featuring instrumental "mood music" (what is now known today as "lounge music"). Gleason served as producer, band-leader, and (on occasion) vibraphone player, despite the fact that he couldn't read sheet music. Several of the albums included original compositions by Gleason. One album, "Lonesome Echo", topped the charts in 1955, and featured an album cover with original art by 'Salvador Dalí' (qv).
• He was not only a boxer and carnival barker in his early years, but also a pool hustler. Interestingly, he went on to play Minnesota Fats ('Rudolf Wanderone Jr.' (qv)) in _The Hustler (1961)_ (qv) with 'Paul Newman (I)' (qv).
• Eponym of the Jackie Gleason (formerly 5th Avenue) Bus Depot in Brooklyn, New York.
• His family background was, according to most accounts, almost Dickensian. It was marked by severe illness and grinding poverty, in any event. His father, Herb Gleason (1884-1964), was a henpecked insurance clerk who took his myriad disappointments in life out in drink. He deserted the family when Jackie was nine. His mother (d. 1932), the former Mae Kelly, was a superstitious, quarrelsome woman, overprotective of her younger son, who died when Jackie was in his teens. An older brother, Clemence, was a wan, sickly lad who died, probably of tuberculosis, at the age of fourteen, when Jackie was three.

Jackie Gleason Photos

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