Pert Kelton (October 14, 1907 – October 30, 1968)
was an American vaudeville, movie, radio and television actress who
first played
Alice
Kramden in
The
Honeymooners with
Jackie
Gleason. She performed in a dozen Broadway productions between
1925 and 1968.
Television
Kelton was the original Alice Kramden in
The Honeymooners
comedy sketches on the
DuMont
Television Network's
Cavalcade of Stars. These sketches
formed the eventual basis for the 1955 CBS sitcom
The
Honeymooners.
Jackie Gleason
starred as her husband Ralph Kramden, and
Art
Carney as their upstairs neighbor Ed Norton.
Elaine Stritch played Trixie, the burlesque
dancer wife of Norton, for one sketch before being replaced by
Joyce Randolph.
Kelton appeared in the original sketches, generally running about
10 to 20 minutes, shorter than the later one-season half-hour
series and 1960s hour-long musical versions. This early incarnation
of
The Honeymooners was darker and harsher than the
softened, toned-down CBS version that appeared after Kelton was
blacklist during the McCarthy
era and replaced by
Audrey Meadows.
The arguments and comedy were harrowingly realistic, almost like
watching your neighbors through a keyhole.
In the 1960s, she was invited back to Gleason's CBS show to play
Alice's mother in an episode of the hour-long musical version of
The Honeymooners (also known as
The Color
Honeymooners), with
Sheila MacRae
as a fetching young Alice. By this time, the original age
discrepancies were reversed, with Ralph married to a much younger
Alice than himself.
Films
Kelton was a young comedienne in A-list movies during the 1930s,
often as the leading lady's wisecracking and equally attractive
best friend. She had a memorable turn in 1933 as dance hall singer
"Trixie" in
Raoul Walsh's
The Bowery alongside
Wallace Beery,
George
Raft,
Jackie Cooper and
Fay Wray.
Directed by Raoul
Walsh, the film depicted Steve Brodie, the first man to
supposedly jump off the Brooklyn Bridge
and live to brag about it. Kelton sings to a
rowdily appreciative crowd in a bawdy dive, using a curious New
York accent to good comedic effect.
As the witty young Minnie in
Gregory
LaCava's pre-Code comedy
Bed of Roses (1933), she
played a bawdy prostitute (along with
Constance Bennett) fond of getting
admiring men helplessly drunk before robbing them, at least until
getting caught and tossed back into jail. Kelton has all the best
lines, surprisingly wicked and amusing observations that would
never be allowed in an American film after the Hollywood
Production Code was adopted. The movie
remains realistic in terms of the interactions of the characters
and features an early turn by
Joel
McCrea as the
leading man, a small
boat skipper who pulls Minnie from the river after she dives to
escape capture.
Ironically, given her later blacklisting, Kelton's last movie for
years was called
Whispering Enemies (1939). Her next
screen appearance was on television in
The Honeymooners
and other sketches on the Gleason show. Kelton's abrupt departure
due to the blacklist was explained away as a result of "heart
problems".
Radio
During the 1940s, she was a familiar radio voice on such programs
as
Easy Aces,
It's Always
Albert,
The Magnificent Montague,
The Stu Erwin
Show and the 1941 soap opera
We Are Always Young. In
1949, she did the voices of five different characters on radio's
The Milton Berle
Show,
Broadway
Kelton made her Broadway debut at age 17 in
Jerome Kern's
Sunny. She played "Magnolia" and sang a song of
the same name.
Years later, she was twice nominated for Tony Awards: in 1960, as
Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Musical) for
Frank Loesser's
Greenwillow and as Best Supporting or
Featured Actress (Dramatic) for
Spofford (1967-68).
However, her most memorable Broadway appearance was as the
impatient Mrs. Paroo (the mother of Marian Paroo) in
Meredith Willson's
The Music Man (1957), which she reprised
in the 1962 film adaptation, the role for which she is probably
best remembered.
In her last years, she was strongly identified with
Spic and Span because of her TV commercials
for that product.
Kelton died of
heart disease at age
61.
See also
References
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