Mondays 9pm ET, 6pm PT with replays three times a day, seven days a week at 11am ET, 8am PT 9pm ET, 6pm PT and 1am ET, 10pm PT
Tuesdays 11:05pm ET, 8:05pm PT
Fridays 7pm ET and PT
Saturdays 11pm ET, 8pm PT Sundays 5pm ET, 2pm PT
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
May 9, 1971
Last Honeymooners episode airs.
The last original episode of the sitcom The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, airs.
Although a perennial rerun favorite in syndication, The Honeymooners actually aired only 39 episodes in its familiar sitcom format, running for just one season in 1955-56. The show debuted on October 5, 1951, as a six-minute sketch on the variety show Cavalcade of Stars, hosted by Jackie Gleason. Cavalcade of Stars evolved into The Jackie Gleason Show in 1952, and Gleason continued the sketches, playing the blustery Ralph Kramden. Regular cast member Audrey Meadows soon replaced the original casting choice, Pert Kelton, as Ralph’s long-suffering wife, Alice, who deflated his get-rich-quick schemes but often saved the day. Art Carney played Gleason’s friend and sidekick, Ed Norton, from the beginning, and Joyce Randolph was the most memorable incarnation of Ed’s wife, Trixie.
In 1955, Gleason had tired of the hour-long variety-show format and wanted to try something new. He suggested creating two half-hour programs: The Honeymooners and Stage Show, a musical-variety show, which Gleason would produce. Among Stage Show’s many musical guests was the first-time TV performer Elvis Presley, who visited the show in January 1956.
In a departure from most TV shows of the time, The Honeymooners was filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast at a later date. To allow Gleason more time to pursue other producing projects, he taped two episodes a week, leaving him free for several months at the end of the season. Shows were taped at New York’s Adelphi Theatre in front of around 1,000 people.
Unfortunately, the two shows did not appeal to audiences as much as Gleason had hoped. He soon returned to his hour-long variety format, occasionally including Honeymooners skits. He sold the full Honeymooners episodes to CBS for $1.5 million, and they would go on to earn the network a windfall in syndication. In 1966, Gleason began creating hour-long Honeymooners episodes, which he aired in lieu of his usual variety format. From 1966 to 1970, about half of Gleason’s shows were these hour-long episodes. In 1971, the episodes were rebroadcast as their own series, until May 9, 1971, when the final episode aired.
Despite its brief life as a traditional sitcom, The Honeymooners remains one of the most memorable TV comedies of all time, rivaled only by I Love Lucy in its pioneering role in television history. Its influence has stretched into modern-day sitcom classics such as Roseanne (also a show focused on a working-class American family) and Seinfeld (another sitcom about wacky New York neighbors). The devotion of Honeymooners fans throughout the years has bordered on cultish worship, including the formation of a club known as RALPH: Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners.
May 14, 1998
Last episode of Seinfeld aired.
The show starred comedian Jerry Seinfeld and was created by Seinfeld and Larry David. Though Seinfeld originally intended the show to be about how a comedian gathers material for his show, it was later better known as the “show about nothing” that was able to draw comedic absurdity from ordinary day-to-day events. Originally, each show began and ended with clips of Seinfeld performing stand-up that related to that episode’s plot.
Seinfeld's ensemble cast included Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), George Constanza (Jason Alexander) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards), all the main characters in the show were based on Seinfeld’s or David’s real-life friends and acquaintances. When the pilot (Originally titled The Seinfeld Chronicles) aired on July 5, 1989, reception was luke warm. The show was picked up by NBC and attracted a loyell following. Each episode's story line would be discussed at the water-cooler the folowing morning (One sparked a lawsuit). The show also introduced new catch phrases into the national lexicon, including “yada yada yada,” “shrinkage,” “man hands” and “spongeworthy.”
The much-anticipated final episode was watched by an estimated 76 million viewers. Advertisers paid the then-record sum of $1.7 million for a 30-second spot in the show.
The 180 episodes of Seinfeld continue to air in syndication around the world.
May 15, 1970
Get Smart's last episode airs.
Get Smart satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as the Chief of CONTROL, a secret American government counter-espionage agency. Henry said the creation of this show came from a request by Daniel Melnick, who was a partner, along with Leonard B. Stern and David Susskind, of the show's production company, Talent Associates, to capitalize on "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today"—James Bond and Inspector Clouseau.[2] Brooks said: "It's an insane combination of James Bond and Mel Brooks comedy."
The series was broadcast on NBC-TV from September 18, 1965, to April 12, 1969, after which it moved to CBS-TV for its final season, running from September 26, 1969, to September 11, 1970. 138 episodes were produced. The series won seven Emmy Awards, and it was nominated for another fourteen Emmys, as well as two Golden Globe Awards. In 1995, the series was briefly restarted, starring Adams and Feldon, with Andy Dick as Max's and 99's son.
Four feature-length movie versions of the "Get Smart" idea have been produced: first, with part of the original cast in 1980's The Nude Bomb, which was also called The Return Of Maxwell Smart, then in the 1989 ABC TV Movie Get Smart, Again!, and most recently, in a 2008 film adaptation starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson and Alan Arkin, which also spawned a spin-off film, Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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