Pert Kelton
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| Pert Kelton | |
| Born | October 14, 1907 Great Falls, Montana |
|---|---|
| Died | October 30, 1968 (aged 61) Westwood, New Jersey |
Pert Kelton (October 14, 1907[1] – October 30, 1968) was an American vaudeville, movie, radio and television actress who portrayed the original Alice Kramden on The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason.
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[edit] The Honeymooners
Kelton was the original Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners skits on The Jackie Gleason Show (the basis for the later sitcom The Honeymooners) featuring Jackie Gleason as her husband Ralph Kramden and Art Carney as their upstairs neighbor Ed Norton, Elaine Stritch as the burlesque dancer wife of Norton (replaced after the first sketch by the less glamorous Joyce Randolph).
Kelton appeared in the original sketches, generally running about 15 or 20 minutes, shorter than the later one-season half-hour series and 1960s hour-long musical versions.
The early incarnation of The Honeymooners on the DuMont Television Network was much darker and harsher than the softened, toned-down CBS version that appeared after Kelton was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and replaced by Audrey Meadows.
In the early shows, Gleason's character was a hapless young fat man married to a middle-aged battle-axe instead of a vibrant young beauty, and the arguments and comedy were harrowingly realistic, almost like watching your neighbors through a keyhole.
[edit] Films
Prior to The Honeymooners, Kelton had worked as a young comedienne in A-list movies during the 1930s, often as the leading lady's wisecracking and equally attractive best friend.
Kelton had a particularly memorable turn in 1933 as dance hall singer "Trixie" in Raoul Walsh's The Bowery alongside Wallace Beery, George Raft, Jackie Cooper, and Fay Wray. The energetic film, directed by Raoul Walsh, was a fictionalization of the story of Steve Brodie, the first man to supposedly jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live to brag about it. Kelton sings to a rowdily appreciative crowd in a bawdy dive, using a curious New York accent to good comedic effect.
Perhaps Kelton's finest role was also in 1933, as the witty young "Minnie" in Gregory LaCava's amazing pre-Code comedy Bed of Roses, in which she played a bawdy prostitute (along with Constance Bennett) fond of getting admiring men helplessly drunk before robbing them, at least until getting caught and tossed back into jail. Kelton has all the best lines, surprisingly wicked and amusing observations that would never be allowed in an American film after the adoption of the Hollywood Production Code. The movie remains extremely realistic in terms of the interactions of the characters and features an early turn by Joel McCrea as the leading man, the skipper of a small boat who pulls Bennett's character out of the river after she's dived off a ship to escape capture.
Ironically, given her later blacklisting, Kelton's last movie for years, released in 1939, was called Whispering Enemies. Her next screen appearance was on television in The Honeymooners and other sketches on the Gleason show; Kelton's abrupt departure due to the blacklist was explained away as a result of "heart problems."
[edit] Radio
During the 1940s, she was a familiar radio voice on such programs as Easy Aces, It's Always Albert, The Magnificent Montague, The Milton Berle Show, The Stu Erwin Show and the 1941 soap opera We Are Always Young.
[edit] Broadway
Kelton gained a measure of professional redemption in the late 1950s playing the impatient mother of skittish librarian Marian Paroo (portrayed by Barbara Cook in the original Broadway cast and by Shirley Jones in the movie version) in the Meredith Willson musical The Music Man. This role is almost certainly what most people remember her for.
In the 1960s, she was brought back to the The Honeymooners cast to occasionally play Alice's bitter mother in the hour-long musical version of The Honeymooners with Sheila MacRae as a fetching young Alice. By this time, the original age discrepancies were reversed, with Ralph married to a much younger Alice than himself.
Kelton died of heart disease aged 61.
[edit] Link
- ^ "Story of Pert Kelton", Edward F. Kelton, 2002.
