Saying Goodbye to an Actress and an Era
And awaaaaay we go!
Hey! It’s been a few weeks since we last talked (insomuch as a blog and newsletter is a conversation I suppose). As life often does, things got busy and I wasn’t able to keep to my self-imposed schedule of twice weekly, or at least not able to keep each post as in-depth as I wanted them to be. So going forward this will go out weekly with the goal of being able to bring you a combination of my thoughts on recent industry news and a deep dive into an aspect of television history for you to read and enjoy at your leisure. A lot happened while I was on my brief hiatus, so let’s jump into it!
Industry News Items
Netflix was in the news a lot last week, holy crapola! Let’s dissect one of the more eventful weeks in the history of the streamer, shall we?
First on January 22, Scott Stuber, the head of film for Netflix, announced that he would be leaving the streamer to start his own film production and finance company. Frequent readers of Set Your VCR know that I have been highly critical of Stuber’s tenure at Netflix, as I feel he has wasted billions of dollars on producing blockbuster-budgeted films with speedy buyouts for talent backend, for a streamer that has only just recently moved to two revenue streams with ads in addition to subscriber revenue. Films like The Grey Man (2022) and Red Notice (2021) cost over $200M each and made next to zero impact in pop culture and I suspect made around the same impact driving new subscriptions. In Netflix speak, those types of films are highly inefficient.
The economics simply do not work for films that size without theatrical box office, premium TVOD rentals, digital and even physical sales. I have no idea why Bela and Ted allowed him such a long runway without getting much in return, when they could have invested those dollars into more, lower budget films as well as additional television shows. I said this when I was at Netflix when they first started getting into original films and I say this today - What Netflix actually needs for original films is to get a Jason Blum or Roger Corman-type in place to set an upper budget limit on films and aim towards genres like horror and sci-fi; you can pump out a large number and for every two or three duds you are likely to get at least one hit that covers the spread for the whole slate. Good riddance Scott, hopefully the people you get to finance your future films have better sense.
Also on January 22 news broke that the WWE had made a deal to move Raw from USA Network to Netflix starting in 2025, as well as Netflix distributing WWE’s library and current content internationally that same year (RIP WWE Network streaming service, at least for international WWE fans) for the cool sum of $5B over ten years. I admit it, I was incorrect in my previous thinking that Netflix wasn’t actually going to jump into making a deal with a sports league. Or was I? During the earnings call the following day, Ted Sarandos categorized WWE as “the drama of sport” and considers it part of Netflix’s “event programming”. So maybe I was partially incorrect. I’m going to give myself a C- grade here, not technically failing, but I definitely missed considering genres like pro wrestling in my sports calculus for Netflix.
The good thing for Netflix is that if its one thing WWE knows how to do, it’s film and deliver multiple live events to distributors on a weekly basis, so all Netflix has to do is take in a live stream from the arena and stream it out to their devices. No need to build up their own internal live team to support this deal, which clearly isn’t anywhere near the level of quality needed to do this on their own. There is, of course, a giant downside to this deal, which I will get to shortly.The next day on January 23 Netflix had their earnings call, where they announced blowing past their projected sub growth for Q4, hitting 13M new subs instead of the projected 8-9M. I guess the ad-supported tier must be working, because they also announced that they will start deprecating the lowest ad-free tier in a number of countries including Canada and the UK starting later this year. For all the bitching and complaining I’ve read online during the run-up to the introduction of an ad-supported tier it doesn’t seem like protest cancellations made any sort of noticeable impact. Keyboard gangsters fail to materialize IRL, as per usual. Ted also got to take a victory lap on the big WWE deal during the call, which turned out to be one of the shortest victory laps in Hollywood history…
…because on January 25, the Wall Street Journal broke an explosive story about sexual abuse and sex trafficking allegations against TKO chairman and WWE founder Vince McMahon, with some very disturbing details coming from the lawsuit. I personally believe these allegations and I hope that McMahon is held responsible for his horrific actions to the fullest extent possible. As of this writing he has stepped down from his chairmanship of TKO, the business entity that now owns both WWE and UFC.
For anyone with even a basic knowledge of the history of WWE, Vince McMahon has been known to be a vile piece of shit going back decades, which is important to note because this is the type of person and let’s face it, type of corporate culture, that Netflix decided to get into business with. Despite Netflix’s vaunted company culture instructing employees not to tolerate that sort of behavior, Netflix continues to do business with noted pieces of shit like McMahon, director Michael Bay, and I’ll even put Dave Chappelle on this list. Despite all their proclamations of championing DEI, distributing projects from women, people of color, and LGBTQ+, and grasping tight to technicalities like technically McMahon doesn’t run WWE anymore, at the end of the day Netflix doesn’t hesitate to cut big checks to pieces of shit if they think it’ll make them more money. And that’s probably the best place to end this recap on the week that was Netflix.
Straight to the Moon, Alice!
On January 14 it was announced that actress Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie on the classic 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners (1955-56), died at the age of 99. With her passing a piece of television history has now completely ended.
Developed by legendary actor, producer, and comedian Jackie Gleason*, The Honeymooners began as a series of sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952-70), a long-running variety program that started life as Cavalcade of Stars (1949-52) on the DuMont Network. Gleason was brought in to host Cavalcade of Stars in 1950 and quickly made it his own and so much of a success that William Paley at CBS wooed him over to the rival network with a much higher salary and show budget.
The Jackie Gleason Show acted as a sort of proto-SNL, with each show starting with a musical number, then comedic monologue, then a series of sketches and musical performances. Gleason developed several characters and catch-phrases; if you have ever heard someone state “How sweet it is!” or “And awaaaaaay we go!” in an exaggerated manner, that person was (likely unknowingly) referencing Jackie Gleason. By far the most popular and most famous sketches were titled “The Honeymooners”. Gleason starred as Ralph Kramden, a boisterous and ambitious bus driver with dreams of striking it rich, and his patient and witty wife Alice, originally played by Pert Kelton before she became a victim of the Hollywood blacklist, then Audrey Meadows took over the role. The character dynamics were further enriched by the addition of Ralph's best friend and neighbor, Ed Norton, portrayed by the amazing Art Carney**, and Ed's wife Trixie, played once by Elaine Stritch with the occupation of burlesque dancer, then changed to a housewife played by Joyce Randolph.
The show's success on The Jackie Gleason Show paved the way for the creation of a standalone sitcom which temporarily replaced the variety show. The Honeymooners premiered on October 1 1955 on CBS, running for a single full season of 39 episodes. The sitcom's charm lay in its portrayal of the everyday struggles of a working-class couple, blending humor with warmth. Ralph's grandiose schemes, often fueled by a desire for quick wealth, served as comedic fodder, while Alice's quick wit and the camaraderie between the characters became defining elements of the show. Gleason made it a point to ground the characters with love for each other, which allows the arguments to remain hilarious because the audience knows that the characters actually care about each other.
The show was filmed live in front of a studio audience, however unlike most other shows of the era that performed live and lower quality recordings made to kinescope (basically aiming a film camera at a television screen and capturing the image) for later repeats, The Honeymooners utilized the Electronicam system which allowed for simultaneous live television transmission and capturing the same image directly to film by splitting the light entering the camera lens into two separate paths, resulting in much higher quality picture for later syndication. The Electronicam, developed by DuMont***, was bulky and by mid-1956 the Ampex videotape recorder was introduced and quickly caught on, marking the beginning of the use of videotape as a recording and archival medium on a large scale.
After the single season 39 episode run, The Honeymooners returned to a series of sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show and multiple specials and reunion shows as late as 1978, in addition to the near-constant availability of the 39 episode season in syndication across multiple networks and countries. Gleason’s career lasted pretty much until his death in 1987, and Carney and Meadows are rightfully placed in myriad lists of all-time TV greats.
But let’s get back to Joyce Randolph. At the peak of the show’s popularity, she was unfortunately its lowest-salaried star at just $500 a week. This was materially less than the $2,000 a week paid to Audrey Meadows or the $3,500 paid weekly to Art Carney, and all three paled in comparison to Gleason who was bringing in millions of dollars per his top-billing contract and other projects. Trixie would be the most popular and recognizable character of Randolph’s career, and after the series she mostly retired from acting. As the longest-lived of The Honeymooners quartet (Meadows passed away in 1996, Carney in 2003) she became the unlikely keeper of the show’s legacy at least in the eyes of the public, even being present for the dedication ceremony of an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Gleason as Ralph Kramden at the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal in 2000. My condolences go out to her family and friends during this time, but also to fans of television history everywhere. An era has truly and finally ended, but fortunately we can still visit Trixie, Alice, Ed and Ralph whenever we want a good laugh and a fun visit to the past.
Go Watch This
The Honeymooners (1955-56) - Of course I’m going to recommend this! Aside from still being very funny, it alongside I Love Lucy (1951-57) set the standard for brilliant situational comedy on television, influencing directly the creation of such shows as The Flintstones and indirectly influencing countless shows and talent. Available on Tubi and Pluto TV, as well as on physical media
Thanks for reading, and tell your friends!
*Fun fact about Gleason - despite not being able to read or write music, he created some of the most popular and best-selling “mood music” jazz albums of the 1950s and 1960s. His first album Music for Lovers Only still holds the record for longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten chart at 153 weeks, almost three full years!!
**Carney’s portrayal of Ed Norton earned him second place in TV Guide’s 1999 ranking of the 50 Best Television Characters of All Time, and was the inspiration of the characters Barney Rubble and Yogi Bear.
***I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but it’s really unfortunate that the DuMont Network has basically been forgotten by the general American public despite their status as an early and initially popular “fourth” major network, decades before Fox, UPN, WB or The CW, their technological innovations, and their cultural impact to the very influential television era that was the 1950’s. One of the most depressing items I discovered while researching this article is that many of the kinescope recordings of DuMont shows, including some episodes of Cavalcade of Stars which also included early Honeymooners sketches, were unceremoniously dumped into New York’s East River by trash barge in the 1970s, depriving television historians of countless early television treasures.