This Week in Television History: January 2024 PART V

 January 29, 1969

The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour debuted on CBS-TV. 

January 31, 1949

These Are My Children, the first daytime soap opera, debuts on NBC. The show, only 15 minutes long, aired weekdays at 5 p.m. in January and February 1949.

January 31, 1984

NBC Newsman Edwin Newman retired after 35 years with the network.

February 1, 2004

Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy.

Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction". The incident, sometimes referred to as Nipplegate, was widely discussed. Along with the rest of the halftime show, it led to an immediate crackdown and widespread debate on perceived indecency in broadcasting. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined CBS a record $550,000 which was fought in Supreme Court, but that fine was appealed and ultimately voided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2011 ruling, and a case to reinstate the fine was refused in 2012.

The incident was ridiculed both abroad and within the United States, with some American commentators seeing the incident as a sign of decreasing morality in the national culture; others considered the incident harmless and felt that it received an undue amount of attention and backlash. The increased regulation of broadcasting raised concerns regarding censorship and free speech in the United States, and the FCC increased the fine per indecency violation from $27,500 to $325,000 shortly after the event. The show was produced by MTV and was themed around the network's Rock the Vote campaign due to the event occurring during an election year. Following the wardrobe incident, the NFL announced that MTV, which also produced the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXV, would never be involved in another halftime show. The exposure was broadcast to an audience of 143.6 million viewers in total.

According to YouTube creator Jawed Karim, Janet's Super Bowl incident led to the creation of YouTube. The launch of Facebook commenced within three days of the incident to capitalize on its controversy through social networking. The incident also made "Janet Jackson" the most searched term, event and image in Internet history, as well as the most searched person and term of the year 2004 and also for the following year. The incident also broke the record for "most searched event over one day". Jackson was later listed in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records as "Most Searched in Internet History" and the "Most Searched for News Item". It became the most watched, recorded and replayed television moment in TiVo history and "enticed an estimated 35,000 new [TiVo] subscribers to sign up". The incident also coined the phrase "wardrobe malfunction", which was later added to the dictionary.

Following the incident, media conglomerates involved with the broadcast who were fined by the FCC, including Viacom and CBS, and subsidiaries MTV, Clear Channel Communications, and Infinity Broadcasting, enforced a blacklist of Jackson's singles and music videos on many radio formats and music channels worldwide. The blacklisting and denouncement of Jackson was considered to be "one of the saddest things in pop music over the last decade". In January 2014, former FCC chairman Michael Powell stated the controversy, fines, and reaction to the incident were overblown, and also said Jackson did not deserve the harsh treatment and blacklisting she had received in the media. Powell also considered it "unfair" that Timberlake did not receive the same effect and backlash that Jackson had endured.

February 2, 2014

The End of NBC Burbank

RCA's decision to expand television studio facilities required moving to the real estate market in the San Fernando Valley-Burbank area, with land purchased from Jack Warner. The newly-christened NBC Color City Studios opened in March 1955, as the first television studio designed specially for the origination of color television broadcasting, although their rivals, ABC and CBS would gradually add color broadcasting to their studio facilities in later years.

KNBC moved to a new building in 1962. In 1964, the Radio City Hollywood building was demolished, as NBC moved more of their West Coast television operations to the Burbank facility. The site is now occupied by a bank.

This studio hosted production of many of the best-remembered game and variety shows from the 1950s through the 1990s, including Hollywood Squares from 1966 to 1980, Wheel of Fortune from 1975 to 1989, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in from 1968 to 1973, and The Tonight Show beginning in 1972. The latter two shows would frequently reference their home in "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" though Tonight would invariably begin each episode with the technically incorrect announcement, "From Hollywood...") During the late 1960s, Carson's Tonight Show would move for periods to Burbank, using studio 1. After the permanent move to Burbank in 1972, Bob Hope's shows taped in studio 1, with The Tonight Show taking a hiatus while Hope produced his specials. In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai and his impending visit to China from the studio.

The Tonight Show would stay in Burbank through Johnny Carson's retirement, Jay Leno's ascendency to host until the end of his first run in 2009, when it moved to an all-digital studio on the Universal lot in 2009 for the short-lived The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. The show moved back to the Burbank Studios when Leno returned as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010. The show used studio 11 until Leno stepped down as host on February 6, 2014. After that, The Tonight Show moved back to New York City's Rockefeller Center when Jimmy Fallon replaced Leno as host, marking the end of the 42-year era in which the show had recorded in Southern California.

 

February 4, 1924

Janet Waldo is born. 

Actress and voice artist with a career encompassing radio, television, animation and live-action films. She is best known in animation for voicing Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and Josie McCoy in Josie and the Pussycats. She was equally famed for radio's Meet Corliss Archer, a title role with which she was so identified that she was drawn into the comic book adaptation.

 

February 4, 1974

Patty Hearst kidnapped.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of whom are armed. Her fiance, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.

Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a "prisoner of war." Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then called this inadequate and asked for $6 million more. The Hearst Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was released unharmed.

In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when a surveillance camera took a photo of Hearst participating in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during a robbery of a Los Angeles store. She later declared, in a tape sent to the authorities, that she had joined the SLA of her own free will.

On May 17, Los Angeles police raided the SLA's secret headquarters, killing six of the group's nine known members. Among the dead was the SLA's leader, Donald DeFreeze, an African American ex-convict who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises.

Finally, on September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors--or conspirators--for more than a year, Hearst, or "Tania" as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. She served 21 months before her sentence was commuted by President Carter. After leaving prison, she returned to a more routine existence and later married her bodyguard. She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.

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Tony Figueroa

Charles Osgood

Life is beautiful but people are crazy.

Charles Osgood

Charles Osgood Wood III

January 8, 1933 – January 23, 2024

Charles Osgood Wood III, known professionally as Charles Osgood, was an American radio and television commentator, writer, and musician.^[1] Osgood was best known both for being the host of CBS News Sunday Morning, a role he held for over 22 years from April 10, 1994, until September 25, 2016, as well as The Osgood File, a series of daily radio commentaries he hosted from 1971 until December 29, 2017.

Osgood was also known for being the voice of the narrator of Horton Hears a Who!, an animated film released in 2008, based on the book of the same name by Dr. Seuss. He published a memoir of his boyhood in 2004.

Good Night Mr. Osgood

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: January 2024 PART IV

 January 23, 2004

Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) died in Windsor, Vermont at age 76. 

He was survived by three children, Michael Derek, Laurie Margaret, and Maeve Jeanne. His wife of 45 years, Anne Jeanne Laurie Keeshan, died February 25, 1996. Keeshan's grandson, Britton Keeshan, became the youngest person at that time to have climbed the Seven Summits by climbing Mount Everest in May 2004. He carried photographs of his grandfather on that ascent, and buried a photo of the two of them at the summit.

Keeshan was buried in Saint Joseph's Cemetery in Babylon, New York.

January 25, 1949

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presents its first industry award at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles. 

The Emmy for most popular program went to Pantomime Quiz Time, and puppeteer Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet Judy Splinters won an award for Outstanding TV Personality. Most of the awards were for programs produced by TV station KTLA. The station also won an award for Outstanding Overall Achievement.

January 26, 1979

The Dukes of Hazzard premieres. 

On this day in 1979, The Dukes of Hazzard, a television comedy about two good-old-boy cousins in the rural South and their souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee, debuts on CBS. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses, the crooked county commissioner "Boss" Jefferson Davis Hogg (Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best).

The Dukes of Hazzard was known for its car chases and stunts and the General Lee, which had an orange paint job, a Confederate flag across its roof and the numbers "01" on its welded-shut doors, became a star of the show. The General Lee also had a horn that played the first 12 notes of the song "Dixie." Due to all the fast driving, jumps and crashes, it was common for several different General Lees to be used during the filming of each episode.

The General Lee also had a CB (Citizens Band) radio and Luke and Bo Duke's CB nicknames or "handles" were Lost Sheep #1 and Lost Sheep #2, respectively. "The Dukes of Hazzard" (along with the 1977 trucking movie "Smokey and the Bandit") helped promote the CB craze that swept America from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

Among the other cars featured on the show were Boss Hogg's white Cadillac Deville convertible, Uncle Jesse Duke's (Denver Pyle) Ford pickup truck and various tow trucks and vehicles belonging to Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones), the local mechanic. Bo and Luke's short-shorts wearing cousin Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) drove a yellow Plymouth Roadrunner with black stripes and later a Jeep with a golden eagle emblem on the hood and the word "Dixie" on the doors.

The final episode of The Dukes of Hazzard originally aired on August 16, 1985. The show spawned several TV specials and a 2005 movie starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott and Jessica Simpson.

January 28, 1984

The first season of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer began on CBS. 

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, with Stacy Keach in the title role, is a television series that originally aired on CBS from January 28, 1984 to January 12, 1985. The series was 24 sixty minute episodes. The show follows the adventures of Mike Hammer, the fictitious private detective created by crime novelist Mickey Spillane, as he hunts down criminals on the mean streets of New York City. While firmly situated in the 1980s, the tone of the show also incorporated elements of classic film noir detective films, such as The Maltese Falcon. For example, each show featured the protagonist's narrative voice-over and, much like the archetypal hard-boiled detectives of years gone by, Hammer would rarely be seen without his wrinkled suit, fedora and trench coat. While his get-up made a particularly awkward fashion statement for the time, the juxtaposition of old and new was a central theme in the show. Indeed, Keach's Mike Hammer left the viewer with the impression that this detective had been somehow transported from a 1940s film set to 1980s New York City. The show's theme song "Harlem Nocturne" by Earle Hagen, a jazz tune featuring a deeply melancholy saxophone, set a gritty tone for each episode. The song proved to be one of the most popular elements of the program. Prior to the show's debut, Keach starred as Mike Hammer in two made-for-TV movies Murder Me, Murder You (April 9, 1983) and More Than Murder (January 26, 1984). Like the syndicated series, these two-hour movies were executed under the guidance of acclaimed Executive Producer Jay Bernstein. Other actors who played prominent roles in Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer include Don Stroud as Captain Pat Chambers, Lindsay Bloom as Hammer's secretary Velda, Kent Williams as Assistant District Attorney Lawrence D. Barrington, Danny Goldman as "Ozzie the Answer", and Donna Denton as "The Face"—a beautiful and mysterious woman who Hammer would see briefly in each episode but would then vanish before he had a chance to meet her.

Production of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was interrupted near the end of the season when Keach was arrested in England for smuggling 1¼ ounces of cocaine. He was in the country filming Mistral's Daughter, a television miniseries based on a novel by Judith Krantz. Keach found himself sentenced to nine months in Reading Prison, but he was released after six months with time off for good behaviour.

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Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: January 2024 PART III

 January 15, 1974

The first episode of Happy Days airs. 

A minor character, super-cool biker Arthur "the Fonz" Fonzarelli, soon came to be the show's central character. The immensely popular series was the most highly rated comedy in the 1976-77 TV season and stayed in the Top 20 most highly rated shows for seven of its 10 seasons. It launched several spin-offs, including Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy.

January 16, 1949

KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles first went on the air with the call letters KNBH (NBC Hollywood).  

Broadcasting from the NBC Radio City Studios on Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood (The location is now a Chase Bank).

The station debuted with three hours and forty minutes of programming, which followed a fifteen-minute test pattern-and-music session. The programming included an eighteen-minute newsreel, a Review of 1948, LA’s first variety show called On the Show, and station’s first live program The Pickard Family, featuring Dad and Mom Pickard and their four children singing familiar American songs. By October 1949, KNBH had extended its operating schedule from five to seven days a week, with approximately twenty-six hours of television programming each week.

In 1954 the station changed its call letters to KRCA-TV for NBC's then-parent company, RCA (the Radio Corporation of America).

In November 1962 the station relocated to the network's color broadcast studio facility in "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" known then as NBC Color City. With the move the call letters were changed again to KNBC. NBC took the KNBC identity from its San Francisco radio station (which then became KNBR).

NBC Studio in Burbank became home to Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (Where announcer Gary Owens first coined the term “Beautiful downtown Burbank)". It was also the home to Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, the daytime drama Days of Our Lives, countless game shows and most notably since 1972 The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and later Jay Leno. 

On October 11, 2007, NBC-Universal announced that it would sell its Burbank studios and construct a new, all-digital facility near the Universal Studios lot. This is in an effort to merge all of NBC-Universal's West Coast operations into one area. When Conan O'Brien took over The Tonight Show he shot in Universal’s Sound Stage 1 (The former home to The Jack Benny Program).

And now for the news.

Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Pat Sajak, Tom Snyder and Nick Clooney (George’s dad) worked at KNBC news early in their careers.

On a personal note: As someone who grew up in Southern California there were many local news stories that later received national or even international attention. I can also say that Channel 4 was making news while they were covering the news. 

May 17^th 1974 Channel 4 and other local TV stations covered a house in Compton that had been commandeered by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the revolutionary group that three months earlier had kidnapped 19-year-old Patricia Hearst (The granddaughter of the legendary newspaper baron). This was the first time I ever remember channel surfing because the event was being covered LIVE (not “Film at 11). Viewers got to see events play out as they happened. Shortly after 5 p.m. Los Angeles police, sheriffs and FBI agents closed in on the house. The house caught fire and 6 bodies were later recovered. Patty Hearst was not there.

In the summer of 1987 during an afternoon newscast, a gun-wielding mental patient took consumer reporter David Horowitz and the rest of the Channel 4 news team hostage while they were live on the air. The gunman was the son of a former Channel 4 News contributor and an invited guest of one of the news team members. As soon as the gunman appeared on camera the station stopped broadcasting the news, but as far as the gunman knew they were ON THE AIR. Viewers would later see tape of Horowitz calmly reading the gunman's statement on camera with a gun pointed at him. After Horowitz finished reading the statement the gunman surrendered his toy gun and was arrested. This event led Horowitz (whose long running syndicated series, Fight Back! originated from Channel 4) to start a successful campaign to ban "look-alike" toy guns in several states, including California and New York.

Later that year on October 1^st 1987 viewers watched anchorman Kent Shocknek and weatherman Christopher Nance dive under their news desk during an after shock from the Whittier Narrows earthquake. Kent Shocknek would never live down this event and forever be known as Kent “After-Shocknek”. It should also be noted that Kent Shocknek was later honored by the Red Cross and by a few cities for demonstrating how to behave during an earthquake.

On April 30^th 1992, the second day of the Los Angeles Riots, KNBC News was covering the historic event nonstop. But that evening the station decided to suspend it’s around the clock riot coverage to air the series finale of The Cosby Show giving viewers a brief Mental Sorbet. Following the broadcast Bill Cosby went on the air and asked Angelinos to pray for peace.

This studio hosted production of many of the best-remembered game and variety shows from the 1950s through the 1990s, including The Tonight Show beginning in 1972. In that year, Johnny Carson moved the show to California from New York where it remained until 2009 when Jay Leno handed hosting duties to Conan O'Brien. During the late 1960s, the Carson Tonight Show would move for periods to Burbank, using the Bob Hope Stage 3 to video-tape a live feed to the East Coast. After the permanent move to Burbank, Bob Hope's show taped on Stage 3, with The Tonight Show taking a hiatus while Hope produced his specials.

January 17, 1949

The Goldbergs debuts as television's first situation comedy. 

The show, which evolved from a nearly 20-year-old popular radio program of the same name, followed the adventures of a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx. Gertrude Berg played gossipy housewife Molly Goldberg, and Philip Loeb played her husband, Jake, who worked in the clothing business. They had two teenagers, Sammy and Rosalie.

In each episode, the family would face another typical middle-class problem--and Molly enjoyed trying to help the neighbors in her apartment complex solve their problems, too. Later, when the fictitious family moved from the Bronx to suburban Haverville, the cast was joined by philosophical Uncle David, Sammy's fiancee (who later became his wife), her mother, and new neighbors. In 1952, Loeb was blacklisted for alleged Communist sympathies.

The show's sponsor, General Foods, dropped the series, and the show moved to NBC-without Loeb, though Berg had fought to keep him aboard. Loeb declared under oath he had never been a member of the Communist Party, and the charges were never proved, but his career was destroyed. He died in 1955 after taking a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room. The show ran until 1954.

January 17, 1994

The Northridge earthquake at 04:31 Pacific Standard Time in Reseda, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, lasting for about 10–20 seconds. 

The earthquake had a "strong" moment magnitude (M_w) of 6.7, but the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America, measuring 1.8g (16.7 m/s²) with strong ground motion felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada, about 220 miles (360 km) from the epicenter. The peak ground velocity in this earthquake at the Rinaldi Receiving station was 183 cm/s (6.59 km/h or 4.09 mph), the fastest peak ground velocity ever recorded. In addition, two 6.0 M_w aftershocks occurred. The first about 1 minute after the initial event and the second approximately 11 hours later, the strongest of several thousand aftershocks in all. The death toll came to a total of 57 people, and there were over 8,700 injured. In addition, the earthquake caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

Television, movie, and music productions affected

The earthquake disrupted production of movies and TV shows filming in the area at the time. The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Profit and Loss" was being filmed at the time and actors Armin Shimerman and Edward Wiley left the Paramount Pictures lot in full Ferengi and Cardassian makeup respectively. The season five episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Pie" was due to begin shooting on the day of the earthquake before stage sets were damaged. CBS's The Price is Right which shoots live in the CBS Television Center, had minor set damage. NBC's The Tonight Show, hosted by Jay Leno, took place in the NBC Studios in Burbank, close to the epicenter of the quake. Also, ABC's General Hospital, which shoots in Los Angeles, was heavily affected by the Northridge earthquake. The set, which is at ABC Television Center, suffered major damage including partial structural collapse and water damage.

All of the earthquake sequences in the Wes Craven film New Nightmare were filmed a month prior to the Northridge quake. The real quake struck only weeks before filming was completed. Subsequently, a team was sent out to film footage of the quake damaged areas of the city. The cast and crew had initially thought that the scenes that were filmed before the real quake struck were a bit overdone, but when viewed after the real quake hit, they were horrified by the realism of it.

Michael Jackson had been due to begin recording of his new album HIStory on the day of the earthquake, but Jackson's entourage moved recording to New York City. They returned to the studio in Los Angeles some six months later.

Some archives of film and entertainment programming were also affected. For example, the original 35 mm master films for the 1960s sitcom My Living Doll were destroyed in the earthquake. The earthquake knocked Los Angeles' radio and television stations off the air. However, they later came back on the air for earthquake coverage.

NBC affiliate KNBC was the first television station to go off the air while reporters and anchors Kent Shocknek, Colleen Williams and Chuck Henry were producing special reports throughout the morning. Other stations KTLA, KCAL, KCBS and KABC were also knocked off the air. Afterward, anchors and reporters Stan Chambers and Hal Fishman of KTLA, Laura Diaz and Harold Greene of KABC, John Beard of KTTV, and Tritia Toyota of KCBS were doing coverage throughout the morning.

Radio stations such as KFI, KFWB and KNX were on the air during the main tremor, causing severe static on the airwaves. KROQ-FM's Kevin and Bean morning show asked those people tuned in to stay out of their homes. KLOS Morning Duo Mark & Brian's morning show was also affected. The duo spoke to Los Angeles area residents about their situation.

FM radio stations such as KRTH, KIIS-FM, KOST-FM and KCBS-FM were bringing special reports on the earthquake when morning show host Robert W. Morgan, Rick Dees and Charlie Tuna were calling Los Angeles residents and others from its sister stations to bring their belongings to the station and advising people not to drink water.

January 18, 1974

Six Million Dollar Man debuts. 

The popularity of the Six Million Dollar Man, starring Lee Majors as Steve Austin, the world's first bionic man, inspires a superhero trend in the late 1970s, which spawns shows like Wonder Woman in 1976 and The Incredible Hulk in 1978. In 1975 two-part episode entitled The Bionic Woman introduced the character of Jaime Sommers, a professional tennis player who rekindled an old romance with Austin, only to experience a parachuting accident that resulted in her being given bionic parts similar to Austin. Ultimately, however, her bionics failed and she died. The character was very popular, however, and the following season she was revived (having been cryogenically frozen) and was given her own spin-off series, The Bionic Woman, which lasted until 1978 when both it and The Six Million Dollar Man were simultaneously cancelled.

Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers returned in three subsequent made-for-television movies:
The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1987), Bionic Showdown (1989) — which featured Sandra Bullock in an early role as a new bionic woman; and Bionic Ever After? (1994) in which Austin and Sommers finally marry. Majors reprised the role of Steve Austin in all three productions, which also featured Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks.

January 21, 1959

Carl Switzer, better known as Alfalfa from the Our Gang comedies, is shot and killed in a brawl. 

Switzer, who became a hunting guide and bartender in Northern California after his acting career fizzled, was shot after an argument over a $50 debt. Authorities ruled the shooting "justifiable homicide."

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Tony Figueroa

Joyce Randolph

Joyce Randolph
October 21, 1924 – January 13, 2024

Joyce Randolph was born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 21, 1924, of Finnish descent. As a teenager, she acted with the Wayne University Workshop. After she finished high school, she began working in retail sales for a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Detroit. When a touring company of Stage Door played in Detroit, she auditioned, got a part, and performed for the rest of the tour. She moved to New York City in 1943 to pursue an acting career. She took roles on Broadway and landed various television roles.

In 1951, she was seen in a Clorets commercial by Jackie Gleason and was asked to appear in a skit on Cavalcade of Stars, Gleason's variety show on the DuMont Television Network. Soon after, she was cast as Trixie in The Honeymooners. Several New York columnists referred to her as the "Garbo of Detroit". "That's still a mystery ... I was a nobody in Detroit. Why Garbo? Well, she was Scandinavian — and so was I", responded Randolph.

Randolph originally portrayed Trixie in skits on The Jackie Gleason Show and The Honeymooners, which included Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, Art Carney as Ed Norton, Audrey Meadows as Alice Kramden, and Randolph as Thelma "Trixie" Norton. In a September 2015 interview, Randolph said that she did not portray Trixie Norton in Honeymooners revivals due to personal and geographic reasons; in addition, Randolph stated that Gleason considered her to be "the quintessential Trixie."

As claimed by Randolph, asking Gleason to give her more lines was out of the question. “You don’t even talk to Jackie, let alone ask for anything,” Randolph said. "He didn’t talk much and he didn’t like to rehearse much.” Randolph talked about a hectic workload for filming the show, with getting all 39 episodes shot within a calendar year. Though she stated there was not much conversation between cast members, everyone showed up on Saturdays to film the show in front of a live studio audience.

On Broadway, Randolph appeared in Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath (1950). After she became identified with the Norton character, she seldom found other parts. "For years after that role," Randolph said, "directors would say: 'No, we can't use her. She's too well known as Trixie." She performed in summer stock musicals, made commercials, and had a few guest appearances on television shows, including her reprisal of Trixie Norton (along with Audrey Meadows reprising her role as Alice Kramden) in the 1991 episode "Fur Flies" in Hi Honey, I'm Home!.

Randolph married Richard Lincoln Charles, a wealthy marketing executive, on October 2, 1955, the day after The Honeymooners premiered. Richard Charles died in 1997 at age 74. Their son, Randolph Richard Charles (b. 1960), is a marketing executive.

Randolph was the grand-aunt of former Major League Baseball pitcher Tim Redding.

Joyce Randolph died in her sleep on January 13, 2024, at the age of 99. She had been a longtime resident of New York City and was in hospice care suffering the effects of old age. Randolph was the last surviving cast member of The Honeymooners.

Good Night Ms. Randolph

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Tony Figueroa