Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet

Dale Proctor

Old Honeymooners episode, “ Young Man With a Horn”.

Newell Post

At 5:58.... 49 years ago I decided to become a professional architect instead of a professional cornetist. I'm not a famous architect. I never built the Empire State Building. Nobody outside of a few local areas ever heard of me. But it was the right decision for me.

Thanks for posting this, Dale. It is worth watching to the end, with or without the Carnival of Venice.

GeorgeB

I still listen to my Jackie Gleason Orchestra lps that were lush arrangements of songs like I'M IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, and others like it. Thankfully, though, Jackie left the cornet solos to the great Bobby Hackett.

grune

TrumpetLearner

The Great One! Thanks for keeping his memory alive.

tjcombo

Apart from the funny, cornety bits, a couple of things struck me in that video.. First was what a great quality clip it was. Not sure whether the originally episode was on film or maybe it was restored.
The other was Gleeson's character waving his fist in his wife's face on a coupler of occasions. What was funny and normal has certainly changed, dare I suggest, for the better.

administrator

@tjcombo said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

Apart from the funny, cornety bits, a couple of things struck me in that video.. First was what a great quality clip it was. Not sure whether the originally episode was on film or maybe it was restored.
The other was Gleeson's character waving his fist in his wife's face on a coupler of occasions. What was funny and normal has certainly changed, dare I suggest, for the better.

Right? Granted, I don't think the schtick was that he actually threatened her, but it's an interesting cultural thing to note.

I liked the message of the episode as a whole.

Shifty

@tjcombo

From Wikipedia: In 1955 Gleason gambled on making it (The Honeymooners) a separate series entirely. These are the "Classic 39" episodes, which finished 19th in the ratings for their only season. They were filmed with a new DuMont process, Electronicam; like kinescopes, it preserved a live performance on film but with higher quality, comparable to a motion picture. That turned out to be Gleason's most prescient move. A decade later, he aired the half-hour Honeymooners in syndicated reruns that began to build a loyal and growing audience, making the show a television icon.

Frame from the end of this episode.

BigDub

One thing seems clear to me. Both Jackie Gleason and Art Carney both played the cornet. Themselves. No fake dubbing. Something you almost never see anymore.
Another thing. My wife and I are about to celebrate our 45th anniversary. The couple who came to the Kramdens apartment were married 40, supposedly. They looked about 89.
Do I look 5 years older than those two?
Don’t answer if you have nothing nice to say....hahahahaha

Dale Proctor

@bigdub said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

One thing seems clear to me. Both Jackie Gleason and Art Carney both played the cornet. Themselves. No fake dubbing. Something you almost never see anymore.
Another thing. My wife and I are about to celebrate our 45th anniversary. The couple who came to the Kramdens apartment were married 40, supposedly. They looked about 89.
Do I look 5 years older than those two?
Don’t answer if you have nothing nice to say....hahahahaha

They must have gotten married later in life...lol.

BigDub

@dale-proctor
Another thought: how many times have you seen someone ( try to ) play the Carnival of Venice with about a 6”x8” sheet of music on a lyre?

Dr GO

@bigdub said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@dale-proctor
Another thought: how many times have you seen someone ( try to ) play the Carnival of Venice with about a 6”x8” sheet of music on a lyre?

Not me, oh no, and trust this response as I am not a lyre.

Dale Proctor

@bigdub said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@dale-proctor
Another thought: how many times have you seen someone ( try to ) play the Carnival of Venice with about a 6”x8” sheet of music on a lyre?

It was probably the marching version...lol. I’d guess a few measures were all he needed, since the script called for him to go cross-eyed at that point. Probably 99.9% of the people watching the show had no idea what the piece was, anyway. We are an elite minority, for sure.

BigDub

@dr-go said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@bigdub said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@dale-proctor
Another thought: how many times have you seen someone ( try to ) play the Carnival of Venice with about a 6”x8” sheet of music on a lyre?

Not me, oh no, and trust this response as I am not a lyre.

Glad to hear that, Doc. Here is a true statement: I NEVER used a lyre after my freshman year of marching band. Not once.

BigDub

@dale-proctor said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@bigdub said in Jackie Gleason Plays Cornet:

@dale-proctor
Another thought: how many times have you seen someone ( try to ) play the Carnival of Venice with about a 6”x8” sheet of music on a lyre?

It was probably the marching version...lol. I’d guess a few measures were all he needed, since the script called for him to go cross-eyed at that point. Probably 99.9% of the people watching the show had no idea what the piece was, anyway. We are an elite minority, for sure.

Must have been the Reader's Digest sheet music version.

grune

Youtube Video

Gleason with Hackett. Long, slow passages with full range are more difficult to play than they sound. Ya gotta have real chops. Nowadays, who could do this? Most I hear run up and down scales like an angry bee. Slow and mellow is gone, 'cause the likes of Hackett are gone.

GeorgeB

@grune

Yeah, seems the jazz players today play very angry. I don't know, but the thing I liked about players like Bobby Hackett, when he played a ballad like Stardust, he improvised but he was still with the melody and you always knew the song he was playing.