THE HONEYMOONERS

1955-1956

The Honeymooners tells the tale of a Brooklyn bus driver, Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and his wife Alice. The sitcom ran for only one season, but it has been popularly syndicated and is well known in broadcast television history. Unlike other sitcoms of the 1950s, The Honeymooners was a great contrast to other suburban, middle class based sitcoms, such as Leave it to Beaver. Ralph an Alice are trapped in working class existence. Their apartment has minimal decor, even lacking curtains on the windows. 

Most episodes focus on Ralph planning a "get rich quick" scheme, but almost always fails in his attempts to become wealthy. Also, Ralph can be seen as a working-class buffoon (Butsch 102). "Television shows usually portray working-class men as buffoons: as dumb, immature, and irresponsible, but loveable. Such characters are set against more mature and sensible wives. Ralph Kramdden, Archie Bunker, and Homer Simpson are representative of the buffoonish television working-class male. On the other hand, a typical middle-class series presents both parents as wise and working cooperatively to raise their families" (Class in America 498). Though the sitcom took place in the time of the "Baby Boom", the couple did not have children, and rarely talked about having any throughout the series. As one of the first depictions of the working class in America, The Honeymooners can be seen as the inspiration of other sitcoms following the same format, such as Roseanne (Simon).


The clip below shows Ralph getting into an altercation with Alice's upper-class mother.

Works Cited

Butsch, Richard. "Why Television Keeps Re-Creating the Male Working-Class Buffon." Gender, Race, and Class in Media. 3rd ed. N.p.: Sage, n.d. 101-07. Web.

"Class in America : An Encyclopedia." (Book, 2007) [WorldCat.org]. Ed. Robert E. Weir. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2013.

Simon, Ron. "THE HONEYMOONERS - The Museum of Broadcast Communications." THE HONEYMOONERS. The Museum of Broadcast Communications, n.d. Web. 11 May 2013.