ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060050
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
Alice could have done a lot better than marry Ralph Kramden. But Ralph could never have done any better than to marry Alice. She endured what others would not, she rarely complained about the couple's impoverished circumstances, and she gave bombastic Ralph the kind of humbling put-downs he needed just when he needed them.
She was, in most respects of the term, the head of the household.
If Ralph was awfully lucky to find Alice, Audrey Meadows was awfully lucky to find her, too. It turned out to be role of her career, a part she seemed born to play, and now it has opened for her the door to immortality.
Audrey Meadows died last Saturday night in Los Angeles at the age of 71, in the same hospital where Lucille Ball died. But Alice Kramden, like Lucy Ricardo, really can't help but live on.
Somewhere in the world for about as long one can imagine, electrons will be forming into her image as new generations discover ``The Honeymooners'' and old generations return to it for comfort and joy. Though first seen more than four decades ago, Alice and Ralph may well outlast us all, their bickerings and reconciliations continuing on in riotous perpetuity.
``She was really a woman's libber, an early woman's libber,'' Meadows said of Alice Kramden during a 1988 interview, because, said Meadows, Alice steadfastly stood up for her rights in the face of Ralph's blustering, if toothless, male chauvinism. She never really lost an argument, and Ralph usually ended up red-faced and sheepish with apologetic embarrassment. He'd realize the error of his ways, and the rightness of hers, and embrace Alice with a heartfelt, ``Baby, you're the greatest.''
And she was.
And then they kissed.
Two other actresses played Alice Kramden during the life of ``The Honeymooners'': Pert Kelton and Sheilah MacRae. But no one could touch Meadows and the earthy integrity of her performance. She saw to it that Alice never lost her dignity because Meadows never lost hers, either.
She kept it even counterpunching Ralph with the bluntest of insults about his weight. ``Alice,'' Ralph said once of his latest get-rich scheme, ``this is the biggest thing I ever got into,'' to which Alice retorted, ``The biggest thing you ever got into was your pants.''
When Ralph scoffed about a tiny jackpot offered by a quiz show - ``Peanuts! What am I gonna do with peanuts?'' - Alice deflated his bravado by replying, ``Eat 'em, like any other elephant.'' After one of Ralph's lengthy harangues about a husband being the king of the castle and the wife being ``but a serving girl'' whose mission was to please him, Alice said, ``Now that you've got your gas bag filled, why don't you blow away?''
Meadows acknowledged that some of those insults were ``a little rough.'' But, she said, ``part of the value of that show was the fact that you could say all those things, and he could get mad at me and say, ``To the moon' and everything, and at the end you always knew there was that tremendous tenderness and love between the two.''
Meadows gave Alice a firm, pungent, penetrating voice, and it was the voice of reason and practicality. He was the foolish dreamer, she the wise realist. Audrey Meadows made Alice Kramden far more than a comic foil or just another sitcom wife. She made her a real person, one who commanded respect and earned great affection, and not just from Ralph, either.
Like her more glamorous sister Jayne Meadows, wife of Steve Allen, Audrey was born in China to American missionaries. During her childhood she dreamed of being an opera singer. Before ``The Honeymooners'' clicked big, she appeared often on TV with the brilliant comedy team of Bob and Ray, whose gentle observational humor was in sharp contrast to Gleason's.
``Oh, God, Jackie was so marvelous to work with,'' Meadows said, dismissing rumors of Gleason being a bellicose tyrant. ``He was really, absolutely, a comic genius. We never rehearsed. Did you know that?'' Instead, Gleason would invite the other cast members to his dressing room for pizza just before the show. ``I've never seen pizzas that big, before or since,'' Meadows said with a smile.
The 39 classic half-hour episodes of ``The Honeymooners'' were done on film, but the film was an accurate, essentially unedited record of a live performance. If somebody muffed a line, it wasn't redone later. If a joke bombed, nobody took the film into an electronic laboratory and inserted laughter where there had been none. The films remain a vital record of television as the essentially theatrical medium it started out to be.
In 1990, Meadows came out of retirement to do guest appearances on ``Uncle Buck,'' a short-lived sitcom starring Kevin Meany in a role created on film by John Candy. To one of the few critics who reviewed the show favorably, Meadows wrote, ``I was so pleased for Kevin because he is one of the finest young men I have met in a long time.'' Only after expressing that sentiment did she go on to thank the reviewer for praise directed at her.
Her legal name was Audrey Meadows Six. Her husband, Robert Six, an airline executive, had died in 1986. Tears came to her eyes when she spoke about him. And tears came to her eyes when she spoke about the death of her other ``husband,'' too.
Jackie Gleason died in 1987, leaving behind a wealth of legendary stories about himself. Gleason's real-life wife, Marilyn, was at his side in Florida, but Audrey Meadows phoned Gleason shortly before his death from Los Angeles.
``Marilyn said, ``I'm going to take the phone in to him. His speech isn't very clear, but I'll put you on.' So I heard her say, as she took the phone to the bed, ``Jackie, it's Audrey. It's your Alice.' ''
She was, of course, our Alice, too.
Later that year, the producers of the annual Emmy awards asked Meadows to appear on the show in tribute to Gleason. She was supposed to walk out onto the set of the old Kramden apartment and deliver a eulogy to Ralph. Meadows did appear, but she refused to talk about Ralph as if he were gone.
``I said, ``A eulogy? I think that is the worst thing I have ever heard in my entire life.' I said, ``In the first place, Ralph is not dead. Ralph will live forever.' ''
``The Honeymooners'' was in the middle of its first season on CBS 40 years ago. It has been in reruns almost continuously ever since. There was always an unmistakable underlying poignancy to the Kramdens and their threadbare, childless marriage, and that only grows now that both the actors who played the parts are gone.
A eulogy for Audrey Meadows? Yes. But a eulogy for Alice Kramden? No. In the first place, Alice is not dead. Alice will - well, you know. You know. - Washington Post Writers' Group
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows as Alice and Ralphby CNBKramden in "The Honeymooners": ``She was really a woman's libber,
an early woman's libber,'' Meadows said of her role. 2. The cast of
"The Honeymooners" included (from left) Jackie Gleason, Art Carney,
Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph.