"With the understatement and subtlety that show business usually applies to such people, he is known simply as The Great One." "At his height, he was the most watched man on television, and since television never dies but goes into endless reruns, he is still very much there to see." "He is known more for the roles he has played than for who he is himself." "We decided to find out just who The Great One is." "Sure you haven't got any money?" " Uh, no, no." "It's against company rules." " We'll play for fun." "[BOTH CHUCKLE]" "SAFER:" "Portrait of a 68-year-old hustler and some memories." "Herbert John Gleason, whose appetite for excess made him larger than life in every way." "Who pranced and partied from Brooklyn to Broadway." "Who rolled over the networks and the film studios to get what he wanted." "Who can't read, write, or play a note of music, but who sold millions of records of his made-up melodies." "Who performed feats of pure fancy, as light-fingered as a jewel thief." "Jackie Gleason is a natural." "Never studied or rehearsed, planned or practiced, he's winged it all his life." "And away we go." "[AUDIENCE CHEERS]" "SAFER"." "Fifty years ago, a teenage wise guy with barely an act, and away he went." "I went to a place called Tiny's Chateau, and I had this stale act of impersonations and a couple of real bad jokes." "And I went on and did the first show, and they were all miners in boots and" "Real tough crowd." "Well, they almost booed me off, and Tiny, who was naturally 7-foot tall, when I came off, he said, "Come here."" "And he took me over to the phone, and he dropped quarters in to call New York." "And everybody at the bar turned around and watched." "And he got Solly Shore on the phone." "And he says, "How can you send me a burn like this?" And he went" " In front of the audience?" " Yeah, in front of the people at the bar." "And when Tiny hung up, he looked at me, and I guess I had that Poor Soul look on." "And he felt sorry." "He said, "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."" "So we had one, two, three, maybe 15 drinks." "And it's time for the second show." "I went out and I killed people." "I did somersaults, told jokes I never heard, played the piano, which I can't play." "And when I came off, Tiny said, "Well, why didn't you do that in the first show?"" "I said, "Well, you know, I'm just breaking in."" "So the next night when I came downstairs, I tried to remember what I had done." "And I knew the only way to remember was go to the bar and have about 15 drinks, and it would come to me." "In those days, of course, no television, uh, and the next best thing, I guess, was Hollywood." "I got 250 a week at Warner Bros., and they put me in gangster pictures." "So then I came back to New York when a guy from DuMont saw me." "And they wanted to replace the comedian on the DuMont network that was showing Cavalcade of Stars." "Two weeks at $600 was the contract." "Did you think there'd be no future for television?" "No." "Well, as far as I was concerned, it was just a job." "At that time, I didn't think I had anything for television." "SAFER:" "The DuMont network folded in a few years, but from the Cavalcade Of Stars show came a cavalcade of Gleason characters." "The Poor Soul." "[BUZZES]" "Reginald Van Gleason Ill." "And a minor sketch about a Brooklyn couple and their upstairs neighbors that would evolve into a half-hour comedy on CBS." "Don't you understand?" "Norton and I, we chip in $300, and we make $2000." "Two thousand dollars, Alice." "That's big, big, big." "This is probably the biggest thing I ever got into." "The biggest thing you ever got into was your pants." "SAFER:" "Alice and Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners." "You're being a wisenheimer, Alice." "SAFER:" "Bickering long before Edith and Archie Bunker, it was kitchen sink drama played for laughs." " Are you gonna give me the money?" " No." "SAFER:" "But the laughs were drawn from the painful childhood of Gleason himself." "Comedy rooted, if not in tragedy, then in poverty." "Bang!" "Zoom!" "A round table with the dismal surroundings and the icebox and the bureau." "And everything went into the bureau." " Uh..." " Was that like the Gleason household?" "Yeah." "My mother had to work because my, uh, father had left when I was about 9 years old, 8 years old." "And she had to work, so she couldn't take care of the home or the house or the flat, uh, very well, and work at the same time." "But she was a good mother and, uh, everything was very pleasant." "Even though it was desultory." " You mean, not a lot of affection?" " Well, it was..." "Oh, there was a lot of affection." "But the place was dull." "The bulbs weren't very bright." "And, uh, the surroundings of course were very bad." "Any of the stage business with that couple that you drew from?" "Oh, there were many." "There were many Kramdens in Brooklyn." "Almost everybody was a Kramden in this particular neighborhood that I lived in." " And" " Pretty lousy husband." "Well, no, not really, Morley, when you think of him," "The Poor Soul hasn't got a hell of a lot of ability." "But he keeps trying." "He gets schemes." "And his schemes are all to make he and Alice happy." "And, uh, he fails." "And when he fails, she feels a great deal of affection." "She knows why he did it." "And he apologizes all the time." "Because with all the bluff, he's..." "He's just an ordinary mokes that's trying to make it and just can't do it, that's all." "Why is this show as successful now, practically in reruns, as it was the first time around?" "And there were only 39 shows" "I could give you, uh, 20 academic answers to that." " No, give me Jackie Gleason's answer." " But the one, it's funny." "The golf swing." "First, step up." "Plant your feet firmly on the ground and address the ball." "SAFER:" "How much of the success was due to Norton?" "What do they mean by "address the ball?"" "GLEASON:" "I say 90 percent." "I'll give him 90 percent." "He's just great." "He was wonderful." "Step UP" "Plant your feet firmly." "Hello, ball." "SAFER:" "Out of the blue, Jackie Gleason decided he didn't wanna do the show in New York, he wanted it in Miami." "When we were doing The Honeymooners, I had a big contract for that for two years." "After the first year, I said I didn't wanna do it, and they didn't believe me." "They thought I had a job somewhere else." "And finally they realized that I just didn't wanna do it." "And, uh, when they approached me to do another show," "I was in California making a picture, and I said, all right." "I said, "But I want a train that goes to Florida."" "Because I had come down here and played golf and liked it, and I figured, might as well go to Florida and do the show, play golf all the time." "And they went for it." " What was on that train?" " Everything." "[PLAYING UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC]" "We had two Dixieland bands coming from California." "They would spell each other, I'd say to them, "Take five miles."" "And, uh, parties went on 24" " I found out that I couldn't attend the parties." "SAFER:" "Were there girls on that train'?" "GLEASON:" "Were there girls?" "There certainly were." "[SAFER CHUCKLES]" "And they were very, very nice girls." "Nothing untoward happened." "Might have been because the berths were too small." "[GLEASON  SAFER CHUCKLING]" "But regardless of that, nothing happened on that train." "SAFER:" "And was there a bar on that train?" "A bar on" " The train was a bar." "I guess that's a classic example of what clout is." " Yes." "That's right." "To say "A train, please."" "When you've got good ratings, and you're one, two, or three in the ratings, there is nothing your little heart desires that they don't provide." "Doesn't work that way anymore, Mr. Gleason." "Uh..." "[BOTH CHUCKLE]" "Did you have a comedy show?" "SAFER:" "You were making extraordinary money." "Ten, 11, 12, 13, 15 million dollars, uh, when 15 million dollars was real money." "Uh, were those tough negotiations with CBS, getting that kind of money out of Mr. Paley?" "Well, the first one we had was for $11 million." "And I had a terrible hangover, and I was at the table with all the agents and we had lunch at Paley's room, and, uh, I fell asleep." "And Paley said, "Well, if that's his attitude, give it to him."" "[CHUCKLING]" "So a hangover worked." "You even hustled the negotiation." "Well, I didn't realize I was doing it." "But you've always lived, I'm told, uh, way over your head, even when you were earning really big money." "I think everybody should make two fortunes." "One to blow, to really live it up with, and then the other, for security." "But when you were spending, I mean, it was excessive." "With the Rolls Royces and the trains and the handouts, and the..." "Almost you" "Well, I should have had more respect for money." "Because I never had any." "And I don't know why-- And I also had no fear when I should have had fear." "For instance, the way they used to, uh, get you in television." "They would get you to paint yourself into a corner of luxury." "Then they would start to dictate." "Because they knew that you feared losing that money." "And so you'd give up your independence and go along with them." "It was, uh..." "It was..." "Threats to your security, and kudos to your ego." "That's how they operated." "But I learned that on the corner of Chauncey Street in Brooklyn, when I was a little kid." "And I knew when they were telling me how great I was that they had something coming up next that they wanted, or wanted me to do." "You once had a television show that probably, without a doubt, was about the worst show ever on television." "Oh, You're in the Picture." "A beauty." "We roll out some pictures." "The panelists put their heads into holes that have been cut into the pictures." "Now, they can't see what the picture is, because we have a little collar under their chin." "They try to guess what the content of the picture is, or what they portray in the picture." "SAFER:" "What possessed you to do it?" "Well, all I can tell you, that there were perhaps 30 executives in CBS who thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen in their life." "I began to think it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life." "And then we did it, and crash." "And I went to CBS and I said, uh:" ""I've gotta go on next week and apologize to the audience." "I can't--"" "They said, "What are you--?" "This is a network, you can't do that."" "Last week we did a show called You're in the Picture." "That laid" "[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]" "Without a doubt the biggest bomb in the history of television." "And the critics hailed them for it, you know?" "They said, "Jeez, at last a network is apologizing for a bomb."" "How does that happen?" "How does such a dumb idea--?" "Because there are executives who have a great talent, and that talent is to say yes that sounds like no, or no that sounds like yes." "So they continue in their jobs because they have this great talent." "You were, at your height," "I guess, the most successful man on television, and maybe even now you're past that." "You may still be the most successful guy ever been on television." "Yet there've been no awards from television." "No." "Uh, I won the Tony on Broadway." "Uh..." " Nominated for" " I was nominated for an Oscar." "I was nominated for an Emmy once." "But that's a far" "It's strange that the business that I devoted most of my endeavor to that there shouldn't be some award." "Uh, now, Audrey, I believe, got an Emmy." "Art did." "June Taylor did when we were doing the variety show." "Everybody got an Emmy but me." "SAFER:" "Ralph Kramden never did get out of Brooklyn, but Jackie Gleason took his revenge by living very well." "By truly being the king of his castle." "In the other room, the game room, we have a crap table from Vegas." "SAFER:" "He and his third wife, Marilyn, are rebuilding their Florida palace almost destroyed by a fire last year." "It is, as he puts it, a prolonged vacation." "He has painted himself into that corner of luxury and has managed to stay there despite a lifelong belief that having fun is better than having money." "If I were broke tomorrow, it would hurt for a while, but, uh, I'd go back to living like I used to live." "You like that one, pal?" "SAFER:" "Tell me something." "The Great One, where did that come from?" "Well," "Orson Welles called me The Great One first." "And then Lucy started to call me that." "And, uh, I'm really not offended by it." "Did you ever really believe it?" "You just saw me play pool, didn't you?"