"The Honeymooners Lost Episodes: Complete Restored Series" Coming To DVD

...their's?

 

well we have to look one the positive side..In my wildest dreams I never expect to see this show turn up in seasons sets on DVD to begin with...I believe they are releasing season 2 in order...

 

Why would you go out of your way to create extra work doing something so stupid. People really try to damn hard sometimes.

 

Nawton'? - ah you a maw'ron!?!

 

Does anyone have any theory as to the 8th Dumont sketch to be included? Only 7 were known to exist up to now. At least a dozen more appear to have aired later in the season so is it possible another was discovered? Or is it a typo?

 

UCLA apparently has the largest collection of Cavalcade Of Stars collection of any archive, so I'm guessing that maybe an 8th sketch was found? The original 7 that were discovered are from the fall of 1951 and go up to Christmas. One day when doing some looking around at the Harry Crane (one-time Gleason writer) collection at UCLA I came across a listing for a boxof Honeymooners scripts. The contents were listed, and I believe that this proved what I have always believed: there were more "Honeymooners" performed on Cavalcade than those found shows that were aired many years ago. It never made sense to me that if the characters were as popular as many claim they were on Cavalcade then why after the Christmas show would Gleason stop performing them even though he hosted Cavalcade up to May or June of 1952?

If you follow this link you'll see a list of "Honeymooners" scripts that are in the Harry Crane collection. About 2 or 3 down there is a listing that says "Surprise Party - script material 1952 April 4." I checked this date with listings of Cavalcade that I have in my Gleason info, as well as to info that I found online, and there was indeed a Cavalcade show on April 4, 1952. No information about sketches that appeared on the that evening, but I believe that evening Gleason and Co. performed a "Honeymooners" based on this info.
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt0p3017jh;dsc.position=2501;style=oac4;view=dsc#c02-1.2.7.5.102

Gleason and Co. with Pert Kelton also appeared on Ed Sullivan's show twice in the spring of 1952, so perhaps one of those sketches appear on the release? As nice as it would be to see those, I'm hoping for a recently discovered 8th DuMont show myself!!!

Additional:
I just did a quick search on the UCLA archives, and only 17 Cavalcade shows came up in the collection. At least that many under Cavalcade of Stars. I'll dig around more later when I have time and see if I can find anything.

 

Great link. I'd love to thumb through those scripts! Manager of the Baseball and Vacation Plans (Fred's Landing) also match up with Cavalcade airdates. So they did those sketches 3 times apparently!

I've always wanted to do a thorough newspaper search to try and find concrete evidence of more Dumont sketches. My local (New Orleans) papers are no help though because our, at the time, only TV station didn't air "Cavalcade of Stars."

I was able to look at old issues of the Syracuse Herald Journal and others (through ancestry.com of all places) which had a column that usually gave a synopsis of that night's episode. There were no available issues during the Dumont run, but I was able to use them to eliminate the possibility of unknown Honeymooners sketches for many CBS "Jackie Gleason Show" airdates.

There must be an archive of NYC newspapers somewhere online that would shed some light on the unknown Cavalcade sketches...

 

Glad you liked the link! To me that just proves that there were more DuMont Honeymooners performed. Now, where are those kinescopes? Probably at the bottom of the river where I've heard the DuMont archives were dumped.
When you look at the list of scripts you'll see many more that look as if they were originally written and performed on Cavalcade, and then remade on CBS. As of right now the only one I can think that is currently "found" is the skit where Ralph and Alice appear on a radio show. This is one that someone can watch the DuMont version, followed by the CBS version and compare the two Alice's in the show!

 

Phew! Threw them all up on eBay and I didn't do too badly. Made enough to cover the cost of the new set, so now I won't have to lose any sleep over it.

I won't miss those bulky old sets. They took up way too much shelf space.

 

I did the same thing with my VHS sets of the classic 39 and Beatles "Anthology" when I heard the dvd's were coming out...

 

we usually lose...
that's excellent! good for you.

 

I have a bunch of these episodes on VHS. I know MPI released about 39 volumes on VHS. I bought about 25 of them during my VHS days. The rest of the episodes I was missing, I bought them when MPI released the older DVDs. I then converted my VHS episodes to DVD. So, I pretty much have all the episodes on DVD from the 39-volume VHS releases.

Do you guys think it’s worth buying this new set anyway for $80? Seems like such a waste to spend $80 when I already own about 85% of the content already. What do you guys think?

 

I have a bunch of these episodes on VHS. I know MPI released about 39 volumes on VHS. I bought about 25 of them during my VHS days. The rest of the episodes I was missing, I bought them when MPI released the older DVDs. I then converted my VHS episodes to DVD. So, I pretty much have all the episodes on DVD from the 39-volume VHS releases.

Do you guys think it’s worth buying this new set anyway for $80? Seems like such a waste to spend $80 when I already own about 85% of the content already. What do you guys think?

 

I think it's going to be worth every penny! at least I'm hoping. I preordered it immediately...

 

I would buy a box set 10 times this size if Shout Factory would release all existing episodes of "You Bet Your Life"!

Jeff

P.S. Lovingly restored would be nice.

 

oh yea...

 

The only "Lost Episode" I have on an official release is the Christmas one, though I did record a lot of them off TV. So I would think I'll get this, at least eventually. (Right now on DVD I only have "the 39," that Christmas DVD and the first volume of Color Honeymooners -- I have some catching up to do). There are two sides to this, really. On the pro-side it's a no-brainer because this will be the first commercial release of the early DuMont skits with Pert Kelton as the original Alice, including the very first one with Art Carney as a cop -- and the original 1950s versions of the "Trip To Europe" shows, which have never appeared anywhere since their original run. However...and though I "get" why this is, it still disappoints me that they are only seeing fit to release the Honeymooners skits and not the entire Jackie Gleason shows. Unlike the "Classic 39," these skits played as part of a live variety show with other elements and other Gleason characters and I think when some people don't enjoy them, part of the reason may be because they are presented out of context as if these were just "more Honeymooners episodes," which they really aren't. Aside from the technical issues of originating from kinescopes, etc. I'm sure glad they are available to be seen in whatever format -- I got a book called The Honeymooners Companion from the late 1970s by Donna McCrohan (pre-Gleason vault mining) and in that book it actually said: "The episodes performed live from 1952 to 1955 are lost; no filmed record of them exists." I'm glad that turned out to not be true! Am I correct in understanding, though, that only a few of the DuMont shows apparently were preserved, and they did several more that probably ended up in the Bay? (I'm still glad to have what we do have.)

I remember in the late 1970s we had a local station that ran some of the 1960s color Honeymooners, and it was a kick to see them, but they only ran 10 of them -- the "Trip To Europe" and then the first show after they came home (skipping the Christmas one). They ran them a few times, but I have to wonder, why just those ten shows out of all the ones they did in the 1960s?

 

I agree. And I wonder whether it's because they don't think people would want the non-Honeymooners material or if it's actually because of clearance issues, etc. Many episodes had guest stars singing popular songs that I assume would have to be cleared. And I believe The June Taylor Dancers would usually perform to well-known songs as well. Not to mention all the other stars, comedians, etc. that appeared. Maybe this would be too cost prohibitive to include all these performances.

But wouldn't it be neat if they at least released in full the episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show where the Honeymooners skits pretty much took up the whole hour anyway? I might be satisfied with that, and that seems feasible to me.

 

They did, it's called 'The Color Honeymooners'....

 

Gleason kept quiet about it. He had 16mm kinescope copies of all of them sitting in a storage bin in Miami. Those turned out to be the only surviving copies in the world. He knew all along they'd eventually be valuable, and they were never really lost at all.

The "Lost Honeymooners" were from the 1952-1955 and 1956-1957 run of The Jackie Gleason Show. I think some of the ones from the DuMont Cavalcade of Stars did not survive. Wikipedia has an interesting comment:

"Because the prints had not been stored under ideal conditions, parts of the soundtracks of three episodes were unusable, and voices had to be redubbed. Gleason personally approved the soundalike actors, with impressionist Joe Alaskey doing Kramden's lines."

 

I'm talking about the original 1950's run of The Jackie Gleason Show which was in black & white.

 

MPI Press Release for the upcoming DVD release, found at http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/3...s-lost-episodes-the-complete-series-1951-1957

 

now that looks fabulous! Can't wait to get my hands on this set...

 

Wow, so we do get some full-length shows. Can't wait to see that!

And now they're claiming 9 Dumont sketches. If that's correct, there's 98 CBS sketches on the set, leaving only 5 sketches still missing. That's awesome!