Joyce Randolph and 'The Honeymooners': A Retrologist reflection on Trixie's New York

Here are places in NYC where you can summon the classic sitcom's spirit -- and honor Randolph's memory.

We can all dream of reaching 99 years, a good long life, and actress Joyce Randolph did just that. She died late Saturday in New York, also the hometown of the fictional character that brought her fame, Trixie Norton.

Randolph was the last surviving member of the core “Honeymooners” cast, but while she lived on Central Park West and haunted the bar at theater-district watering hole Sardis’, her Trixie character would likely have visited neither.

Trixie Norton, along with her husband, sewer worker Ed Norton (Art Carney), and their best friends, bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and long-suffering housewife Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows), lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and were working class to the bone.

Gleason, who created the show, which began as a sketch on his variety series, hailed from Brooklyn — 328 Chauncey St., an address and building that still exist. Google Maps labels it “The Honeymooners House.”

That address is mentioned on the show, even though the actual 328 Chauncey is nowhere near Bensonhurst.

But that little matter is beside the point. Fans of “The Honeymooners” can visit a few other spots to pay tribute to the show and to Randolph’s memory, who died 21 years after her TV husband Carney; 28 years after her best sitcom pal Meadows; and 37 years after “The Great One” himself, Gleason.

What a remarkable link to a vanished era we are losing with Randolph’s passing.

You can pay homage to Randolph at Sardi’s, and poke into the small bar that is to your left when you walk into this Times Square staple.

Not long ago, Joyce Randolph held court right here at Sardi’s, her portrait and those of her fellow “Honeymooners” cast members placed above the bar. (Rolando Pujol)

She visited this nook often, and the bar salutes her and her “Honeymooners” co-stars. Their portraits flank a Rolex clock, from left: Gleason, Meadows, Carney and Randolph. The New York Times obituary captures her in this very room, where you could raise a glass in her honor.

Joyce Randolph, immortalized with a portrait at Sardi’s, a dream of every actor (along with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) (Rolando Pujol)

Wrote Glenn Collins of The New York Times in 2007, in a profile of Randolph and her ties to Sardi’s:

She is strong of voice and precise of diction at 82, given to addressing people as “Dear.” How sweet it is, then, to hang out with Miss Randolph in one of her favorite haunts where the honeymoon is never over.

Sadly, it now is.

Joyce Randolph attended the dedication of this statue of Ralph Kramden back in August 2000. (Rolando Pujol)

Not far from Sardi’s, at West 40th Street and Eighth Avenue, stands a statue of Ralph Kramden, appropriately enough outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It’s been there since 2000 when TV Land installed it as part of a wonderful campaign that left Minneapolis with a Mary Tyler Moore statue, Chicago with a Bob Newhart statue, and Salem, Massachusetts, with an Elizabeth Montgomery (Samantha Stephens) statue, all sitcoms the cable network once carried.

Back in 2016, when I worked at WPIX, I digitized the August 2000 report on the Kramden statue’s unveiling, which you can watch here. And none other than Joyce Randolph was there.

She told Channel 11 his widow approved of the statue and that it was a good likeness, even if she’d seen Gleason “a little plumper” in real life.

“The Honeymooners” cast at the headquarters of WPIX in New York (Rolando Pujol)

The Channel 11 connection is a big deal for any “Honeymooners'“ fan. The show remains the legendary staple it is in part because of the devotion that WPIX has shown to the sitcom. WPIX picked up reruns of the show in 1958, and with notable pauses, has shown it ever since.

One of those pauses happened between 1979 and 1981. Resting a show, as the TV programming parlance goes, is not unusual, especially when there are only 39 episodes, which by 1979 had been run so many times that most die-hard fans knew them by heart.

The pause that did not refresh led to the creation of R.A.L.P.H., the Royal Association for the Longetivity and Preservation of the Honeymooners, a group that celebrated the show with fan gatherings and kept the pressure on WPIX to bring it back and keep it on. Those were the days when you couldn’t stream the show. “Streaming” meant something else. “Binging” meant an excess consumption of food or drink, and a privileged few had VCRs to record the show off the air and play it back at their convenience. So a station resting a show meant the natives (aka fans) grew restless fast.

By December 1981, the show was back on the air — see a promo of the event I digitized here — and R.A.L.P.H. carried on for several more years, helping expand the show’s popularity.

The famous globe in The News Building lobby (Rolando Pujol)

WPIX is headquartered at 220 E. 42nd St., called The News Building and the former home of The New York Daily News. WPIX — its call letters standing for New York’s Picture Newspaper, the paper’s old slogan — was founded by the Daily News in 1948, a decade before the station picked up reruns of “The Honeymooners.” While The News left its namesake building in 1995, WPIX remains, and the lobby is open to the public.

The Art Deco majesty of The News Building (Rolando Pujol)

Fans of the 1978 movie “Superman” will recognize The News Building and lobby as the stand-in for The Daily Planet, and there’s a historic exhibit on a wall. It’s well worth a visit if you’re a fan of the show, Superman, comics and grand Art Deco lobbies, complete with that iconic massive globe.

The Jackie Gleason Depot in Sunset Park, Brooklyn (Rolando Pujol)

Where else can a “Honeymooners” fan go to commune with the spirit of the show? Another spot is Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where an MTA bus depot was named after Jackie Gleason in June 1988, a year after his death.

And, as I mentioned earlier, you could always head out to 328 Chauncey to see Gleason’s old home.

Alas, the Raccoon Lodge in TriBeCa, named after the fictional fraternal lodge to which Ralph and Norton belonged on the show, is no more. It had “Honeymooners” memorabilia and a nice neon sign, below.

The neon for the Raccoon Lodge back in 2009 (Rolando Pujol)

This article names a few more places, including the hotel where Gleason maintained offices (still there) and the theater where the show was filmed (long gone and replaced by a skyscraper).

Perhaps the best way to honor Randolph is to catch an episode or two or, well, 39 of the show, be it on DVD, streaming, and, for those in New York, still on WPIX, which shows it Saturday nights and runs a twice-annual marathon, a small one on Thanksgiving and a longer one for New Year’s.

Back in 2015, PIX was keeping a tape of the show at its transmitter facility at the Empire State Building, supposedly ready to roll in case something ever happened to the main signal from master control. (At least, so I’d imagine.)

Hopefully, that tape is never played, because — if you’ll indulge me for a moment — it would mean something awful has happened, but it’s also comforting to know that if something terrible were to occur, and the only thing left to broadcast was an episode of “The Honeymooners,” I’d somehow be at peace with that.

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