Ralph and Alice Kramden

TV's gruff but loveable "Honeymooners"

by David Johnson

In the early 1950s, "The Honeymooners" appeared as a segment of The Jackie Gleason Show and became an instant success. In 1955, The Honeymooners became its own weekly program.

Gleason played gruff but lovable New York City bus driver, Ralph Kramden, whose drab life was enlivened by his whimsical get-rich-quick schemes and by his sharp-tongued wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows.

Their friends, sewer worker Ed Norton (Art Carney) and his wife, Trixie (Joyce Randolph), frequently got caught up in the misadventures.

Although she lived in a drab apartment (which Ralph called "a palace") Alice stayed with Ralph through thick and thin, proving that love does not need glamour to survive.