Playboy Interview: Jackie Gleason

Think about this: In some markets, Ted Koppel and his "Nightline" are getting serious competition from a fat, irascible bus driver named Ralph Kramden, the main character in a sitcom that's 30 years old. Of course, as far as many diehard "Honey-mooners" fans are concerned, it would take a full-scale attack by Libya and a hostage crisis, to boot, for them to switch from that one-room tenement in a Brooklyn neighborhood that never was.

Which is why it's not at all surprising that today 70-year-old Herbert John Gleason—a.k.a. Ralph Kramden, a.k.a. The Great One (that last appellation courtesy of Orson Welles)—is basking in a sort of recycled sunshine. The principal cause of this new light is a batch of "Honeymooners" segments—henceforth known as the lost episodes—that carry with them the import of a mislaid Mozart symphony. Unseen since their original broadcast some 30 years ago, the 62 long-stashed kinescopes were preserved in a chilled Miami vault and have only recently been excavated. Before that discovery, a scant 39 half hours of "Honeymooners," filmed during the 1955—1956 television season, constituted the incomplete canon of Kramdenia. Subsequently tagged the classic 39 by purists, these episodes have been rerun in some markets hundreds of times apiece, gleaning new generations of devotees along the way.

The Great One's new popularity may well be the sweetest renaissance ever experienced by a living actor. There's Ralph (the Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of "The Honeymooners"), whose membership boasts 12,000 card-carrying disciples—Honeymoonies?—among them, Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper. Then there's the newly published, reverential tome "The Official Honeymooners Treasury." In March, Gleason was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. And on its heels, there's a campaign to see that he at last gets a special Emmy award to make up for the one that has somehow eluded him during the span of his remarkable career.

If celebrity is just as sweet the second time around, we at Playboy remember the challenge it was to get Jackie Gleason to sit for his "Playboy Interview" more than 23 years ago. It was 1962, and Gleason, then a barreling locomotive of showbiz high life, was tearing along at breakneck speed. With his "Honeymooners" gig supposedly a thing of the past, he had knocked off five movies in two years: "The Hustler" (for which he garnered his lone Oscar nomination), with Paul Newman; "Gigot" (his auteur Chaplinesque classic); "Soldier in the Rain," with Steve McQueen; "Requiem for a Heavyweight," with Anthony Quinn; and the overlooked gem "Papa's Delicate Condition."

The mush-lush albums of mood music he churned out with his Jackie Gleason Orchestra clogged the record charts. His trademark catch phrases—"Awa-a-ay we go," "You're goin' to the moon" and "How sweet it is!"—were stapled firmly to national consciousness. And, of course, every detail of "The Jackie Gleason Show," which ranked sturdily in the top ten, was personally supervised by its economy-sized namesake.

Two years after his "Playboy Interview," Gleason demanded that CBS move production of his blockbuster show to the balmier clime of Miami Beach, Florida. Naturally, the network acquiesced, and Gleason became an instant state treasure.

So he is today among the last of the all-purpose show-business legends, a dinosaur who defiantly stomped wherever he pleased in the realm of performance and conquered all comers. Even Ralph Kramden, an occasional victim of hyperbolic delusion, would have justifiably argued that "The Honeymooners" was easily the biggest thing that Jackie Gleason ever got into (his wife, Alice, however, might have countered that it was his pants). There's no doubt that Kramden was Gleason's role of a lifetime. As John O'Hara once wrote, "Ralph Kramden is a character we might be getting from Mr. Dickens if he were writing for TV."

Gleason first tried Ralph Kramden on for size in 1951, while hosting "Cavalcade of Stars" on the DuMont network. In 1952, he hatched "The Jackie Gleason Show" on CBS, and "The Honeymooners" came with it. So popular were the sketches that Gleason—notorious for demanding elephantine sums of money—signed a $15,000,000 contract with Buick, promising two seasons of self-contained "Honeymooners" shows starting in 1955. After the first year, he backed out of the commitment, contending that his standards for the show couldn't be maintained. He then sold "the classic 39" into syndication for the relative pittance of $2,000,000.

Yet holding out may be the best revenge: Last year, Gleason, for an undisclosed (read staggering) chunk, sold to Viacom International the syndication rights to all the remaining "Honeymooners" sketches—ranging in length from ten minutes to nearly an hour—staged on the CBS variety show between 1952 and 1957. Showtime began beaming "the lost episodes" over cable last September, and the shows are ready to go into general syndication next month throughout the United States.

As the grandiloquent Great One told us in the 1962 grilling, it was more of a shimmy up from the streets of Brooklyn than a meteoric, overnight bounce to superstardom. It went something like this:

Born in Bushwick on February 26, 1916, he was introduced to vaudeville at an early age by his hard-drinking father, who skipped town when Jackie was eight. His mother, a coddling woman, died in 1935 and Gleason, who'd been lingering in Brooklyn pool halls, left for Manhattan's club circuit.

Jack L. Warner saw Gleason's club act in 1941 and nailed him to a studio contract. In 1948, Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town" program greased Gleason's television debut. The next year brought the short-lived "Life of Riley" series, and then came 1950, when Gleason was tapped to front "Cavalcade of Stars."

And from there, away he went....

Those are the facts. A little harder to pin down are the legends of Gleason's full life: the "broads," as he still calls them, the booze, the fits of ego, the star turns. To this day, he signs letters The Great Gleason. He has rip-snorted with the best (Sinatra, Bogey, DiMaggio, Duke Wayne), shot pool with Willie Mosconi, golfed with Richard Nixon.

His first marriage (to Genevieve Hal-ford—it survived 34 years and produced two daughters) ended in 1970. His second, to former Baltimore secretary Beverly McKittrick, lasted only four years. And late in 1975, he went for number three: Marilyn Taylor Horwich—sister of his longtime choreographer June Taylor—with whom he had fallen in love when she danced on his show 20 years earlier. This marriage, now in its 11th year, is flourishing.

In 1970, "The Jackie Gleason Show," whose ratings hovered in the top 20, was canceled when demographics portrayed its audience as over the hill. Gleason moved into a home on the grounds of the Inverrary Country Club in the Fort Lauderdale area, just off a golf course christened The Great One. Until 1979, he hosted the popular Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic there.

Eight years ago, while in Chicago touring with "Sly Fox," he suffered a heart attack. Triple-bypass surgery led to a full recovery.

Aside from reruns, Gleason's television profile dwindled. There were three "Honeymooners" specials, a Dean Martin roast and the CBS movie "Izzy and Moe," which reteamed him with Art Carney. Recent film work, none extraordinary, has included the "Smokey and the Bandit" trilogy, with Burt Reynolds, "The Toy," with Richard Pryor, and "The Sting II," which was simply a mistake.

Gleason's forthcoming film, "Nothing in Common," scheduled for release this summer, promises a return to acting of substance. Directed by Garry ("Happy Days," "The Flamingo Kid") Marshall, it's billed as "a very serious comedy" about the irreparable relationship between a young ad exec (Tom Hanks) and his cantankerous father (Gleason).

Since The Great One refuses to give interviews of any sort in his home—they remind him too much of work-—we dispatched Bill Zehme to infiltrate the Chicago set of "Nothing in Common," where Gleason agreed to fill in the gaps of the past two decades and reminisce about his glorious second honeymoon. Zehme reports:

"On my first day with Jackie Gleason, he ate a bus driver alive. The square-off happened within the fictional confines of a movie scene: His character sideswipes a rapid-transit vehicle on Chicago's North Side and, like Ralph Kramden, refuses to accept the blame himself. As the cameras whirred, Gleason's temper steadily went white-hot. The eyes bugged. The jowls billowed. The voice roared. It was thrilling, probably somewhat metaphorical and just slightly foreboding.

"I was pleasantly surprised, though. The Great One, it seems, has gone marshmallowy. He was as serene as a snoozing lynx. He was kind, avuncular and generous. I hunkered down in his padded trailer and logged dozens of hours with him between exterior shots around the Windy City. 'It helps pass the time,' he often acknowledged. During much of that time, his wife, Marilyn, sat with us, doing needlework and listening. He frequently flirted with her. As I plied him with questions, some of them plainly impertinent, he sat, smoked (a couple of packs per session), nibbled cheese, guzzled cinnamon-spiced coffee (unspiked) and never once threatened to send me to the moon.

"He chooses not to trifle with introspection. He is, however, a nostalgic swoon. Charmed with the notion of doing his second 'Playboy Interview,' he leaped at the chance to review his first one before we got under way. Not that he is unimpressed with what he means to people today. I watched one afternoon when a pale young woman approached Gleason on the street and asked for an autograph to give her dying father. The Great One obliged and, handing back her paper scrap, announced grandly, 'This will give him ten more years.'"

[Q] Playboy: We'll get around to what Honeymooners fanatics want to read about; but first, a little history. We asked you to refresh your memory by rereading the interview Playboy did with you in December 1962. What do you think now of Jackie Gleason back then?

[A] Gleason: You know, I read the thing and told my wife, Marilyn [smiles], "That guy's gonna succeed." That interview was an absolute assertion on my part all the way through. You had to have a lot of guts to do that. But that was the attitude for a kid who had just hit show business big to have. That was the way to go. Fearless.

[Q] Playboy: A theme that runs through that interview is the importance of being egocentric. Do you still consider yourself an egomaniac?

[A] Gleason: I've never denied my ego. As I once said, an actor's vanity is an actor's courage. It's the only thing that keeps him going. For someone who makes $200,000 or $300,000 a week to walk out onto a stage and entertain maybe 1,000,000 people, humility is senseless. If he starts scuffling the sand with his toe, he's full of crap. It's commercial naïveté.

[Q] Playboy: Then you won't quibble with the word genius when it's applied to you, as some critics do today?

[A] Gleason: I know. We laugh about it. All of a sudden, I'm a genius. You know what a genius is? It's a guy who knows that he isn't one. That's tough to do when you're in show business. Everybody's praising you and jumping up and down. The whole business is superlatives. In Hollywood, they call you sweetie and baby. At first, you think, What the hell is he calling me sweetie for? Then, after a while, you don't even hear it. It all mixes in with the automobile noises.

[Q] Playboy: So when the character you played in Soldier in the Rain—the 1963 film you did with Steve McQueen—said it's tough being a fat narcissist——

[A] Gleason: I'm not really narcissistic, because I don't fool myself. I can have ego, because I realize that I've got talent, and that's fortunate.

[Q] Playboy: That takes care of the narcissist part. Care to comment on the other part?

[A] Gleason: I never thought I was fat. I really didn't. The only reason that I knew I was fat—and disliked it—is that I like to wear nice clothes.

[Q] Playboy: Would you have become as popular if you had weighed 130 pounds?

[A] Gleason: Yes, because I would have done a different kind of comedy. But when you're fat, you can get away with murder. If you're slim and handsome, you don't look like a comic—though when I started on television, I was very thin. That's because I'd been in Hollywood, working as a contract player for Warners, and one of the directors had said, "If this guy loses weight, he can be a leading man." So they put me in the hospital, where I lost weight so fast that my beard wouldn't grow. Then my skin started to peel, and I got the hell out of there.

[Q] Playboy: How much did you lose?

[A] Gleason: About 30 pounds in two weeks.

[Q] Playboy: In your publicity stills from that time, you look suave, svelte and a lot like Robert Taylor.

[A] Gleason: In those days, studio photographers made everybody look like Robert Taylor.

[Q] Playboy: So, as a result, Warners decided that you were too handsome to be funny?

[A] Gleason: Yeah. I played gangsters, escaped convicts and Arabs. They were mostly wartime pictures and, as long as you killed the Nazis, they were hits.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't there a comedy axiom that fat is funny?

[A] Gleason: Well, that's not true. Otherwise, everybody fat would be making money as a comedian. Tragically, many people who are fat can't make a living, can't make friends, can't do anything. Show business is different. You can be fat, have all the friends you want and make money. There is a discouraging line between real life and entertainment.

[Q] Playboy: Fat jokes have been a staple in your career. Have they ever stung?

[A] Gleason: Never, never. If they had bothered me, I would have lost weight. And even when I weighed 260, I was doing 88s and somersaults. I could always move.

[Q] Playboy: What's your fighting weight?

[A] Gleason: About 210.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that the sex lives of the overweight are more interesting?

[A] Gleason: No, but people might like to believe it. I once said that sex for a fat man is much ado about puffing.

[Q] Playboy: We should probably have a more subtle way to bring up The Honeymooners, but ... what kind of sex life do you think Ralph and Alice Kramden had?

[A] Gleason: Well, you know, at the end of each show, when they'd kiss, you could imagine that they must get along pretty good. You never got to see the bedroom. I felt it was better to leave that room to an audience's imagination. That kiss, incidentally, was very important; if we had done three shows in a row without it, people would have hated The Honeymooners. They would have thought, Jesus, it's just arguing all the time.

[Q] Playboy: It wasn't just the bedroom that you didn't show on The Honeymooners. The episodes mostly took place in one cramped room. Why?

[A] Gleason: You know, from the beginning, we were criticized: Why were we in this dump, this one room? Why didn't we expand? But the idea was to get onto the stage and make people laugh. If we needed different locations to do that, we weren't doing a good job. If the four of us could walk around and past one another in that little space, week after week, and make audiences laugh, then we were doing something that had quality. We never used jokes. I hate jokes. That's all you see in some of the sitcoms now.

But, truthfully, The Honeymooners is a reflection of real life. Ralph is a funny character, a guy who makes excuses for his failures by blaming them on everyone other than himself, which is human nature. People recognize that. Everybody who watches the show has failed from time to time. Even if you are a success, you can look at it and say, "Jesus, I remember when I went through all that crap, trying to make it."

The fact is, the audience can feel superior to the Honeymooners. For instance, they have nicer homes than the Kramdens. And there's something about feeling superior to a piece of material that allows you to be more generous with your applause and your laughter. So that was a psychological point in our favor.

[Q] Playboy: According to legend, the Kramden apartment was modeled on the flat in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn where you and your mother lived during your teens.

[A] Gleason: Almost exactly. We had maybe two more rooms. There was a front room, two bedrooms and the kitchen, with the window leading to a fire escape. We had a dresser there, which is where everything was kept. And the table, which was the center, the working table, the discussion table, the pleasure table. Everything happened on that table.

[Q] Playboy: How did Ralph come to be, of all things, a bus driver?

[A] Gleason: I thought that was a good profession for him, because bus drivers get aggravated, and I was delighted with anything that would aggravate Ralph. At one point, I thought he'd be a policeman, but that would have been out of his range of intelligence. He wouldn't be forceful enough, and it just didn't fit him. And I wanted Ed Norton in the sewer, because his character was off the wall. What better profession could a guy like that be in? And it gave us a plethora of material.

[Q] Playboy: Was there any reason that Ralph almost always wore a uniform—either a bus driver's or his Racoon Lodge's?

[A] Gleason: Yeah. Insecure people love to put on the security of a uniform.

[Q] Playboy: One of the most controversial of the recently unearthed Honeymooners episodes has Ralph and Alice just a heartbeat away from adopting a child. Why were there no Kramden offspring?

[A] Gleason: All sitcoms—Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet—had kids running around in them. And when you have a kid on a show, you have to pay him some attention in the sketch. The kid's got to come walking out into scenes. And kids can't time jokes or lines or dialog. To do a show live with them, you'd be dead. So I decreed it—no kids.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds a little like W. C. Fields's philosophy. Do you think Ralph would have been a good father?

[A] Gleason: Oh, he would have for a while. But, eventually, he'd get just as aggravated with the kids as he would with his wife. And that would have been dangerous. The audience will take it when he gets aggravated with his wife, but if he keeps going at a little kid, they're not going to like that.

[Q] Playboy: About those constant threats against Alice—"One of these days ... bang, zoom!" What convinced us that he'd never deliver on the promise?

[A] Gleason: You see it. She stands there, looking at him like he's an idiot. She knows he's not going to hit her, and that's why she stands there calmly and lets him blow off steam. Everybody does that, you know, threatens, "I'll murder him, I'll kill him!" And then, when the guy comes in, your attitude changes, downshifts to "What do you mean by doing what you did?"

[Q] Playboy: So you'd thought out what Audrey Meadows would look like while you were blustering?

[A] Gleason: I gave thought to every speck of The Honeymooners. There were dos and don'ts that made it very difficult for the writers. Sometimes they would write something that might get real big laughs, but I knew it wasn't in character and it wasn't right.

I remember one situation where Ralph goes into a coffee shop and there's a beautiful girl standing there, who starts to throw charm on him, and he goes along with her. Well, I knew that that wasn't right, that he shouldn't do it. Even if he would do it, he shouldn't do it on The Honeymooners.

[Q] Playboy: Ralph wouldn't look past Alice?

[A] Gleason: No, she's it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you could get away with the "bang-zoom" stuff today, given the sensitivity of feminists?

[A] Gleason: It's happening! People often ask me whether such and such a thing on the show would go over today. Well, what the hell do they think it's doing? Audiences are watching it, men and women, and they think it's a riot. Alice, in fact, might have been the first women's libber. Ralph didn't get anywhere trying to downgrade her. He tried, but he never won; she won. So, in a way, that was a forerunner of the feminism stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with Ralph that a man is "the king of the castle"?

[A] Gleason: There are some men who think that, and Ralph was one of them. And there was a legitimate reason for that. He never achieved anything, so as a façade to hide his failure, he would assume this overwrought, pugnacious attitude. Alice understood that.

You know [voice rising in anger], it took time to figure out all these little things that were necessary to sustain the show, to make it a solid property. People used to say about me, "Well, he doesn't rehearse. Christ, he just walks in, does it and walks out. He doesn't care." But I did care—and I say that egotistically. That's the only thing that really steams me.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, your distaste for rehearsals has never been a secret.

[A] Gleason: I don't like to rehearse. I have a photographic memory, so the day we do a show is the day I look at the script. It's unfair to the other performers; but, of course, we had performers who could do a show during the Civil War, people like Audrey and Carney. At first, it was tough on them, too. But I wanted that spontaneity. I was criticized for that, but it turned out that I was right. Why do you have to direct four people who walk around a room? People walk around rooms all day. If you bump into them, you push 'em out of the way. They come to you, you go to them. It's more natural.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there a name coined for the kind of actor with whom you preferred working?

[A] Gleason: [Smiles broadly] They used to call them "Gleason actors." And we had a bunch of them who would turn up playing different characters. They would have to be people with nerves of steel who could do a show in front of a firing squad. They were fearless; they knew there would be no rehearsals, and they were just great. They were very proud to be Gleason actors. They were the survivors.

[Q] Playboy: Audrey still talks about being in tears after her first show because of the strain of working that way.

[A] Gleason: She told me about that later. Today, she says to me, "I wouldn't trade those days for anything in the world." All those who complained in the beginning about its being rough always took pride in having survived it.

[Q] Playboy: It probably goes without saying that Art Carney is the greatest Gleason actor of them all.

[A] Gleason: Oh, Jesus, he is the epitome! He out-Gleasons me! He did beautiful things. One time, he was in the Kramden apartment and he couldn't get out; the set was stuck, and the door wouldn't open. So he looked around and went out the window!

The first time I worked with him, I saw that this guy knew what the hell he was doing. Every move he made was the right move. That's what I looked for—moves in performance. Dialog isn't too important; but if you see a guy make a difficult move look easy, then you know he's got something special.

With Carney, it was obvious. In the first Honeymooners, he played a cop. At the end of the scene, Alice and I were arguing about my going down to Krausmeyer's bakery for bread. I'm saying, "You think I care about bread?" And I throw a crust of bread out the window. She says, "Well, I don't care about cake!" So she throws a cake out the window. Several seconds later, there comes a knock on the door. It's Carney as a cop, with the cake all over him. I say, "Gee, I'm very sorry." And he says, "Watch it next time"; then he does a funny little move and goes away.

[Q] Playboy: How long after that was Ed Norton incorporated into the show?

[A] Gleason: The very next week.

[Q] Playboy: You've said you give Carney 90 percent of the credit for the series' success.

[A] Gleason: [Shrugs] Oh, sure. Why not?

[Q] Playboy: What was the catalyst in the Gleason-Carney chemistry?

[A] Gleason: You can't describe chemistry. You just can't. There's an innate spark or a bell that rings. And you know it.

[Q] Playboy: Some people have compared it with Laurel and Hardy's rapport. They were fans of yours, weren't they?

[A] Gleason: Christ, we'd get calls from them. If there was any similarity, it was in the timing. But nobody could do what Laurel and Hardy did. They were spectacular. Babe Hardy would call me up whenever I went out to the Coast, and we'd get together. He was beautiful. We'd be sitting in Lakeside country club, drinking, and he'd always have one ear listening to the television there. As soon as the commercials came on, he would jump from the table to watch; then he'd come back. I never knew why. I guess he liked them.

[Q] Playboy: Did you drink with Hardy often?

[A] Gleason: Oh, certainly. He was a delight to watch drinking, because he was just like his character. He'd wipe a drop off the glass, pick it up with his pinkie way out, sip it, put it down, tap it, very much like the character that he played.

Stan Laurel, on the other hand, was far from the character he played. He was the brains; he wrote their stuff and, more or less, directed their performances.

[Q] Playboy:The Honeymooners had always been just a sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show. But during the 1955 season, the most famous and enduring 39 episodes were filmed as separate half-hour shows. You had promised the network two years of The Honeymooners, but you pulled out after that lone 1955-1956 season, claiming that the quality couldn't be maintained.

[A] Gleason: No, it couldn't. When I told them I didn't want to do the second year, they didn't believe me. They thought I had some other job. But we had done every script you could think of. And it was a good thing that we quit. We might have continued and gone into the ground, and the reputation of the first 39 would have gone into the ground with us. I just didn't want to get stuck.

[Q] Playboy: But, of course, The Honeymooners did return and flourish again as sketch segments on your show. Then, in 1957, you sold the syndication rights to those classic 39 shows for a paltry $2,000,000. Do you ever lie awake at night, ruing the day?

[A] Gleason: No, never. I sold them because I didn't want to get into the syndication business. Christ, you'd have to hire thousands of people, such as accountants and watchers to keep track of where the show was playing. It's a very complicated thing. With all the outlay for help and offices and everything, I might've made a couple of hundred thousand dollars more, but I didn't want to get mixed up in it.

[Q] Playboy: Even so, it seems to us that the royalties would have been enormous.

[A] Gleason: No, royalties don't mean anything. For instance, Audrey may get five or ten dollars every time an episode airs someplace. It doesn't add up to any kind of really big money.

[Q] Playboy: Audrey, in fact, was the only cast member who had a royalty clause written into her contract. That probably had something to do with the fact that her brother was a lawyer.

[A] Gleason: Yeah, I think he was, and that was one of the demands that they made. I said, "Go ahead and give it to them." It didn't hurt me; it only hurt somebody who bought the films and had to pay out. So I was delighted for her. And, fortunately, she doesn't need the money—which is usually the way.

[Q] Playboy: The recently discovered "lost episodes" that Showtime has been running, of course, were never really lost. The question is, Had you known all along that you were sitting on a gold mine?

[A] Gleason: It never occurred to me. Somebody asked if I might have any of the kinescopes of the sketches from the variety shows we did on the DuMont network and, afterward, on CBS. I said, "Yeah, we've got a bundle of them in an air-conditioned vault in Miami," and that's when we started. I had been getting annoyed paying the air-conditioning bills, anyway. Many times, I said, "Either throw them away or sell them!"

[Q] Playboy: You'd never looked at the kinescopes over the years?

[A] Gleason: No, but we watch them now on Showtime at home. Some of them are good, especially when Carney does something crazy. I look at myself and, since they span several years, one minute I weigh four pounds, the next I weigh 300.

[Q] Playboy: Incidentally, The Flintstones, as you know, was the blatant cartoon version of The Honeymooners. What did you think of the replicating job?

[A] Gleason: We thought of suing them. But I said, "Oh, shit, let's not go through that." We've never done anything about it. It's a good show. In fact, that guy who did Fred's voice dubbed in things for me in motion pictures, whenever they were looping and I couldn't make the session. I forget what the hell his name was [Alan Reed]. Nice guy.

[Q] Playboy: You talk of money in terms of money and big money. Therefore, we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on your notorious big spending. In retrospect, are fools and their money soon parted?

[A] Gleason: I've said it before: The best thing you can do with money is spend it. You can't sit on it, you can't throw your arms around it, you can't kiss it. For people to make money and put it away without ever spending any of it—I can't think of anything sillier! Do it while you can enjoy it. It's like the guy who could never afford a steak until he had no teeth to chew it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know your net worth?

[A] Gleason: I don't really want to know. I'll have Mare call up and find out what it is every once in a while. At this stage of the game, when you're spending money, you'd better make sure you've got it!

[Q] Playboy: As long as you aren't going to divulge your own numbers here, maybe you'll talk more freely about Bob Hope's.

[A] Gleason: Hope is gorgeous! I drive him crazy. For instance, we did a show in New York a while back and he said to me beforehand, "For Christ's sake, during this interview, don't start that shit about me having $150,000,000." So as soon as the interview started, I said, "Tell 'em about the $150,000,000 you got!"

[Q] Playboy: You've won a few bucks from him on the golf course, haven't you?

[A] Gleason: Mm-hmmm. He's not cheap, you know, but he's tough to pay off. When we play, I call a guy out of the crowd and, before each hole, I have him take my $100 and Bob's $100 until we've finished the hole. I tell the guy to give the $200 to whoever wins. We do that each hole. Yeah, I've got a lot of Hope's money. And it's all new. It's never even been folded.

[Q] Playboy: Bob Hope isn't the only big name with whom you've palled around. Tell us about John Wayne.

[A] Gleason: Duke and I got loaded many a time, but the best time was at Toots Shor's anniversary dinner. They had this big spread—where the hell was it?—at the Waldorf or something. Duke and I were on the dais, sitting next to each other. The speeches were going on, and they were all saying how beautiful Toots was. So Wayne said to me, "Is Toots really that great?" I said, "No chance." He said, "Well, what are you going to say about him?" I said, "When it comes time, you'll hear."

So Duke got up before me and said what a great guy Toots was. Then it was my turn; they'd held me for the last, because they knew I was always kidding. I got up and said some of the most horrible things about Toots ever. I said he was in love with Sunset Carson's horse, for starters, and I don't remember what else. When I went back, Duke said, "You did it, you son of a bitch!" Then we started to go at it.

[Q] Playboy: For the benefit of those of us who weren't around during those halcyon years, perhaps you could fill us in on just who or what Toots Shor was.

[A] Gleason: Well, Toots was a very gruff guy—gruff because he wanted to hide his sentimentality. He was big and fat, and he'd call you a stewed bum or a crumb bum, then ignore you in his restaurant. Later, though, he'd come over and sit with you. I told him one time that the best thing you could say for his food was that it was warm.

But he was very generous. He gave money to guys who were broke or in trouble. As a matter of fact, he gave me money many times. I called him once from Philadelphia and said, "Send me $2000." He said, "Well, what do you want it for?" I said, "If you're going to get nosy, I won't take it." He gave it to me. That's the kind of relationship we had. He was a good friend and a good drinker. He was the friend of Presidents—Truman, Roosevelt, all of them.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of drinker was Humphrey Bogart?

[A] Gleason: Bogart got drunk on the first drink. And he stayed that way, never got any drunker. We'd go to "21" and, as soon as they saw him come in, they'd groan a little bit. He had his own table there, with a sign on it that said Bogart. We'd sit down and start drinking. I knew when he was loaded, because he'd say, "Let's go somewhere." When he said that, I knew that he was ready.

[Q] Playboy: Frank Sinatra?

[A] Gleason: I think the first time Sinatra ever got loaded was with me. We went to a joint called the Harlequin, and Sinatra said, "I feel like getting smashed." I said, "All right." He said, "Now, what's a good drink?" I said, "You've never gotten smashed?" He said no. I said, "Jack Daniel's! That's a good way to start." And, to this day, he drinks Jack Daniel's. I understand Frank does an hour and a half at parties with stories about the two of us.

[Q] Playboy: Mickey Mantle?

[A] Gleason: Mickey Mantle was great. He liked to drink, but he didn't get sloppy. Neither did Joe DiMaggio; DiMaggio could drink bloody marys for a whole weekend without getting stiff. And Don Ameche was one of the great drinkers of all time. He'd come in with the starched collar and tie and the perfect suit. He'd sit down at 11 o'clock and drink until two in the morning, when he'd get up with the same crisply starched collar.

[Q] Playboy: That hard-drinking era is gone forever, isn't it?

[A] Gleason: Yeah, those were easy, generous days. "There's too much jealousy now, too much worrying about making money. In those days, I was signing tabs and I had no money. A lot of guys didn't have money to keep spending on booze all the time. But now, a lot of people are running scared, and I think it's because they don't have talent. Guys like DiMaggio, they had talent. Nothing frightened them, and they could enjoy themselves, knowing that their enjoyment wouldn't affect their business. But nowadays, people are very circumspect about having fun. You never see anybody out getting loaded anymore. Back then, everybody was out chasing stuff.

[Q] Playboy: At your peak, how much booze could you put away?

[A] Gleason: Drinking depends on your mood. If you're feeling fine, you can drink gallons. But if you're in a bad mood, you've got to stay away from booze. After the first few shots, you're gone.

[Q] Playboy: You once said, "I'm not an alcoholic; I'm a drunkard." Is there really a difference?

[A] Gleason: Yeah. By drunkard, I meant drinker, because anyone who's a drinker gets drunk. There's no doubt about that. At the time, I think I said that drinking removes warts—not from me but from whomever I'm with. But the distinction was that I drank a lot but could still memorize 60 sides of script when it came post time and never missed a show. And I worked week after week, so I must've known how to control it.

[Q] Playboy: How bad was your worst hangover?

[A] Gleason: There are different classifications of hangovers. One is called the chuck horrors, which is when you figure that because you didn't eat the night before, you should make up for it the morning after. So you order some Chinese food or spaghetti for breakfast. Then there are the jingles, where you walk up and down the office, jingling coins or keys in your pocket. And then there's the oh-God-what-did-I-do-last-night? classification, which is frightful. Unfortunately, I remembered every damned thing.

[Q] Playboy: You must at least have come away with irrefutable, expert advice on hangover cures.

[A] Gleason: [With the Gleason swagger] You're coming to the font!. Everybody I knew had one. When Toots had a hangover, the first thing he did was eat a whole bowl of peanuts and then have about five Cokes. You knew then that he had a real Olympic winner going.

The only thing that will straighten you out—and you have to have great control—is a couple of drinks. That will stick, but then you begin to feel good and say, "Jesus, I think I'll have some more .... " That's when you've just got to stop.

[Q] Playboy: Coffee never worked for you?

[A] Gleason: Coffee only makes you more nervous. When you have a hangover, you've already got the shakes. The caffeine in coffee only makes you bounce higher.

[Q] Playboy: But you must have loved coffee—at least, it appeared that way. After all, on the, Jackie Gleason Show that was broadcast from Florida in the mid-Sixties, you always had one of your so-called Glea-Girls bring you a cup on camera—and everyone always wondered what was in that cup. Want to tell us?

[A] Gleason: Well, it was booze. [Smiles] I didn't see any reason to fake it. That started one night when I told Greta—one of the tall showgirls—to take a coffee cup just before the show started, put it on the end table near my chair and, in front of the audience, pour out of a bottle of Scotch into the cup. So the audience was watching this; then the show started. I came out and took a sip of the booze. And it worked because the audience was in on the joke.

[Q] Playboy: Does Scotch taste better in porcelain?

[A] Gleason: I got used to drinking it that way when I'd go to after-hours joints that weren't supposed to sell liquor. The idea in those places was that if cops came by—and, of course, they were paid off—they'd look around and say aloud to one another, "Say, Al, they're just drinking coffee."

[Q] Playboy: So you and the Glea-Girls were simply playing out a variation on an old theme. How did the Glea-Girls come about, anyway?

[A] Gleason: The sponsors were so damn eager to have their products shown with signs and logos. I said, "You can't do a show holding up signs; let's get some beautiful broads and let them say what the signs would." It was sure a hell of a lot more entertaining. They were awful good.

[Q] Playboy: Were there any specific qualifications required of the Glea-Girls?

[A] Gleason: That they look good on television. A lot of pretty girls didn't look good on camera. But there were certain girls who had features that attracted the camera. [Winks] And, if they could speak....

[Q] Playboy: Girls were an important ingredient of your variety shows. What was the most enlightening way to appreciate the June Taylor dancers?

[A] Gleason: [Devilishly] You're talking, no doubt, about the overhead camera angle? June had as much to do with that as I did. With 16 dancers on a small screen, you've gotta do some fluky things to make it look interesting. From the start, I wanted 16 girls, and everybody thought I was crazy. But I knew that the sight of 16 girls on a stage, when those curtains opened and you saw all this flesh, would give you a lift.

[Q] Playboy: Did you appreciate any of them individually?

[A] Gleason: [Looks obediently at his wife, the former Marilyn Taylor, June's sister, with a smile] There was only one.

[Q] Playboy: According to our research, you had a special weakness for chorus girls. You've married two, after all.

[A] Gleason: Oh, I've known a lot of chorus girls. People think that chorus girls are loose women. They're far from it. First of all, they're very, very attractive. They have their pick of whomever they want to go to dinner with. And they're not pushovers or easy dames. Most of them are pretty intelligent. No, I had a weakness for all girls—as long as they combed their hair.

[Q] Playboy: Which perhaps explains your three marriages. Your first marriage, to Genevieve Halford, spanned 34 years, during most of which you were legally separated. You've blamed yourself for its failure. Why?

[A] Gleason: My style of life was completely different from hers. She couldn't understand that. She thought that the value of my life wasn't high enough; that if all I thought about was having fun, it wasn't enough. And she was right. Life should be of a higher quality and reach a higher goal of morality. But I wasn't interested. I was interested in having fun.

Not that I was wrong in wishing to have fun. The problem was that she didn't want to have the kind of fun I was having. She didn't like to sit around, drinking with the guys. And she was right in thinking that.

[Q] Playboy: Your indiscretions during that marriage were reported like box scores in the press. That couldn't have helped.

[A] Gleason: Oh, they were always writing about me, saying that I was with this girl or that, and I probably was. I had them out to dinner or dancing at night clubs. But I wasn't very promiscuous, though it might seem that way.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard something about your having exactly that reputation.

[A] Gleason: Well, you never try to buck legends. That's an impossibility. You let them go and they finally die out. But the more you deny a legend, the healthier it gets. Remember, I was in a particular branch of show business where we were surrounded by beautiful women. Hundreds of them. So, naturally, you'd have to speak to one or two. And that would be enough to get you into any column.

[Q] Playboy: One of your former flames said publicly that you're "easy to fall in love with." Do you think that's true?

[A] Gleason: Not being a broad, I don't know what to say to that.

[Q] Playboy: In 1970, almost immediately after Genevieve had granted you a divorce, you married Beverly McKittrick, one of your neighbors in Miami. That marriage fell apart quickly and made for a very messy, public divorce. What unraveled it?

[A] Gleason: It was another mistake. It wasn't right. Marriages don't unravel; they bump and come apart. She, again, didn't like my friends and didn't understand show business. She was a very nice woman, but we weren't in the same field.

[Q] Playboy: In the press, she was very hostile over the split.

[A] Gleason: Well, what would you do if you were a woman married to a wealthy guy and a divorce was coming up? You'd want to get some of the money. And how are you gonna get it? You think you're gonna frighten the guy. I didn't frighten. She tried, but she didn't get anywhere. Any woman would do that.

[Q] Playboy: People who know you best have said that Marilyn has exercised a mellowing effect over you in the past ten years. What's her secret?

[A] Gleason: Oh, absolutely, she has! Her secret is that I love her. And that's very important. Sometimes there is a pseudo attitude that looks like, sounds like and feels like love, but it isn't. And that's when you realize that a mistake's been made. Marilyn and I wanted to get married 30-some years ago, but we couldn't; I couldn't get a divorce from Gen, though we were separated, legally separated. The difference was, Mare and I went to night clubs, and we'd socialize with people. We had similar interests. So we were compatible not only socially but professionally.

[Q] Playboy: It must be difficult for any woman to deal with the adulation you've received from the earliest days of your career. Didn't you once say that you moved The Jackie Gleason Show from New York to Florida for that reason—to escape the constant adulation?

[A] Gleason: No, the reason for the move was simple: I wanted to play golf. The truth is, when I got to Florida, the superlatives really began to fly. I'd walk into a restaurant and everybody'd stand up to applaud. At the height of my popularity down there, they were calling me the emperor of Florida. One time, not long after we got down there, people approached me to run for governor. At first, I thought they were putting me on. Then, when I saw they were serious, I said, "You've got to be a bunch of idiots!"

[Q] Playboy: You became the state's leading tourist attraction almost immediately upon your arrival there. How did you discover the Big Grapefruit?

[A] Gleason: I used to go to Palm Beach on my vacations, and I told Jack Philbin, my producer, that moving the show would be a beautiful way to get the hell down there to play golf every day. Philbin, by the way, was the first one ever to get me on a golf course. Funny thing, we were walking down the very first fairway—this is my first time out—and I fell, spraining my ankle. I said to Philbin, "You and your fuckin' golf!"

Two years before we moved down there, I told CBS that I didn't want to do the show anymore. I was out in California, making a picture. They wanted me back for the fall season, and I did everything to discourage them. I told them I'd do it only if I got my own train to take me back across the country, stopping off at big towns along the way to get publicity and ending up in New York. Naturally, they gave in. Pretty soon after that, they started talking about another season, and I said, "Well, all right, but I gotta have another train, and we're going down to Florida to do the show."

[Q] Playboy: And you proceeded to turn Miami Beach into "the sun-and-fun capital of the world."

[A] Gleason: We did very well in Florida. It could have been a disaster moving everybody from New York. If we hadn't clicked, it would have been frightening. The network was incredulous. They said we'd never find lighting down there, but when we pioneered the best color lighting in television, they came in from California to see how we did it. They said we wouldn't find stagehands, but we found 'em. They said we wouldn't get scenery, but there were plenty of great carpenters. It was a great place to do a show. I don't know why more people don't do 'em down there.

[Q] Playboy: One show is doing quite well down there—Miami Vice. Are you a fan?

[A] Gleason: I saw it once, a repeat, and thought it was fine. It's strange, though, that a city like Miami, in order to get publicity, would accept a show like Miami Vice. But as long as it gives 'em a plug ....

[Q] Playboy: What do you make of the show's fashion influence?

[A] Gleason: That's even stranger. The stuff those guys wear—T-shirts underneath jackets—was worn years ago. Bums walked around like that. Come to think of it, so did Ed Norton.

[Q] Playboy: Which leads to another subject on which you're particularly vocal: style. Cary Grant has called you the most stylish man in show business. Appearance, we sense, is very important to you.

[A] Gleason: If you're dressed nicely, you're obviously a man of some kind of substance. You have some taste. People who dress well exude confidence. I'd rather associate with someone neat and clean, someone who looks good.

[Q] Playboy: Thus, your decision to have some facial nips and tucks done a few years ago. You had your eyelids and chin fixed?

[A] Gleason: Yeah, well, my eyelids were covering my eyes, as they do with age, and it was affecting my sight. So I had them taken up. And I got rid of the turkey neck. If you're going to appear in front of the public, you've gotta look as attractive as you can.

[Q] Playboy: Care to share some of your sartorial pointers with us?

[A] Gleason: I happen to dress conservatively. I usually have all my suits made in London, at Kilgour and French, or in New York, by Fioravanti, who's considered the best tailor in town. When I'm dressed up, I wear a white shirt with a white handkerchief. I never wear colored shirts with different-colored handkerchiefs and ties. Or the same-colored handkerchief and tie, which is atrocious.

[Q] Playboy: Your signature is the red-carnation boutonniere in your lapel. When did that start?

[A] Gleason: That came from Brooklyn. On Mother's Day there, if your mother was alive, you wore a pink carnation; if she had passed away, you wore a white one. I thought it looked real spiffy. But wearing a pink one regularly, I thought, would have been a little effeminate. And white certainly would be funereal. But red—that comes through.

[Q] Playboy: Back to Florida. In 1970, CBS pulled the plug on your show while it was still getting excellent ratings. Weren't you, in effect, the first performer ever to fall victim to demographics?

[A] Gleason: One of them. Red Skelton and I were in the top 20 or 15 or something. Then CBS started this demographics thing. They said we had a large audience, but our people were too old and weren't buying anything sponsors were selling. I couldn't understand that. Neither could Red. He normally won't get on the phone, you know; he has a thing about it. But he called me when they canceled us. His opening line was very funny. He said, "What the hell are demographics?" I said, "I haven't the slightest idea."

[Q] Playboy: For a long time, you had the network on the defensive. Did you feel that you were unbeatable?

[A] Gleason: Oh, no. You're unbeatable only when you have clout. If you don't have clout, you're as weak as anyone else. To have clout, you have to be right. You can't be wrong two or three times; then you're dead. But it is enjoyable to swing your weight around. It's also very dangerous, because when you lose your clout, you are in terrible straits. You only make yourself more vulnerable. Ultimately, I lost my clout due to the demographics. If we were selling things, they never would've gotten around us.

[Q] Playboy: When you quit television, were you sick of the grind or bitter because you were canceled?

[A] Gleason: Oh, no, I really wasn't bitter; I wanted to quit, anyway. We had gone from 1964 to 1970 in Florida, learning four sketches a week, and it was enough. Then, when we did the hour long Honeymooners, it was a Broadway musical every week. You had to learn six, seven songs. Since we didn't like to use cue cards or TelePrompTers, it made for a pretty big strain on everybody.

[Q] Playboy: Strain or not, we get the feeling that you have an aversion to mundane labor. Do you like to work?

[A] Gleason: No. Not unless it's something interesting. A lot of people say, "Well, I like a challenge." I don't like challenges. Life is tough enough without any challenges.

[Q] Playboy: There was one infamous series you did in the early Sixties that lost your interest immediately and lasted one week. You know the one we're talking about.

[A] Gleason: [Grins] The show was called You're in the Picture, and it was horrible. We had a screen painted with medieval costumes, jockey costumes, whatever, and above them there were holes through which celebrities stuck their heads. We had Buddy Hackett, Arthur Treacher, Johnny Carson—oh, a bunch of them. (continued on page 149)Jackie Gleason(continued from page 58) They were asked questions, and you had to guess what they were.

Halfway through the show, I knew we were going into the ground. I said, "The only thing that would help this show is if we shut the holes up." It was a bomb. I told the execs that I was going on the next week to apologize. They said, "You can't do that! This is a network; we never apologize!" I got one exec on my side, and he talked them into letting me do it. And when I did it, of course, it got great critical acclaim. Nobody'd done that before.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about your amazing—and generally overlooked—recording career. The Jackie Gleason Orchestra sold millions of LPs full of what might be called syrupy strings. What was their appeal?

[A] Gleason: Well, they were syrupy. We had one of the best orchestras you could get. I wouldn't hire people unless they were the top guys, and we'd have a lot of fun. But we didn't fool around with the melody; the melody was the main thing. I wouldn't have strings do big sweeps that agitated the melodies. It turned out to be very romantic music.

[Q] Playboy: We suspect that you had ulterior motives.

[A] Gleason: Well, it helped the guy who had a dame and wanted to have that atmosphere you'd see in motion pictures. You know, in pictures, a guy's talking to a dame, and then the music sneaks in and everything is magnified. My records proved it works for guys in Brooklyn, too.

[Q] Playboy: You actually arranged the music?

[A] Gleason: No, I did the complexion of the arrangements. I would tell the arranger how I wanted the music to sound. For instance, when I wrote Lover's Rhapsody, which was the first opera I did, I would tell the guy where I wanted to hear the sound of heels clicking as the hooker walked down the street.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get this straight: Your romantic albums were mainly standard popular tunes. When did you write operas?

[A] Gleason:Lover's Rhapsody was for television, as was Tawny, which was a ballet and a symphonic theme, and it got great notices. By the way, that was when you had to use clout. As soon as a network hears that a comedian is putting on a ballet and he's writing the music, it gets very nervous.

[Q] Playboy: Tough to imagine. Did the serious music do well with the average guy?

[A] Gleason: Yeah. All the albums were best sellers. I had three albums on the charts at the same time. I've got a great story about that. I was sitting at Toots's bar with the classical conductor Hugo Winter halter, and Dick Jones, who produced the records, walked in and threw a check onto the table. It was the royalties for two months, something like $50,000. Hugo looked at the check, went over to a telephone, dialed a number and said, "Hello, Juilliard? Fuck you!"

[Q] Playboy: Didn't Salvador Dali have a hand in the packaging of one Gleason Orchestra album?

[A] Gleason: He did something for me that he's never done for anybody else. I did an album called Lonesome Echo. I was sitting with him at El Morocco in New York, and we were both stiff. I said to him, as a joke, "How about painting a cover for the album?" And he said, "Certainly!" And he did. We have the original at home. He's beautiful. We're very good friends. He used to carry a cane; he'd pull a sword out of it and wave it around. I once asked him why he wore that curly mustache. He said, "They're antennae. I get messages coming in!" I knew then he was my kind of guy.

[Q] Playboy: Another interesting fact is that you wrote two of the most famous songs in Tv history—your theme song, Melancholy Serenade, and the Honeymooners theme. How did they come about?

[A] Gleason: On The Honeymooners, we used to play Our Love Is Here to Stay at the end of the show, when I'd start to apologize to Alice. Finally, I decided I might as well write a theme, since I'm a member of ASCAP. And with the variety show, we had to have a theme song. I wanted something that had a tremendous burst of "Now it's gonna happen." I also wanted nostalgia inside the melody. And when they hit those tymps, the music would say it was a big opening for the show.

[Q] Playboy: Then the camera would pan across the Miami water and the girls would come out kicking.

[A] Gleason: The girls—that was the best part. We made sure I never lacked for an opening.

[Q] Playboy: One last musical question: We understand that you take full credit for giving Elvis Presley his first big break. Care to share the details?

[A] Gleason: I don't take full credit. He just showed up on our program before he showed up on anybody else's. I was producing our summer replacement show, starring Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. I was sitting in my office, and Jack Philbin handed me a picture of him. I looked at the picture and said, "Can he make any noise at all?" They played me that record, That's All Right, Mama, and I said, "Nail him." So we put him on. It didn't take much foresight; all you had to do was look at the picture and you knew that here comes a big one.

Anyway, we had him on several times and he was doing great. Then Tommy and Jimmy got a little angry because it was turning into the Elvis Presley show and, since they were good friends of mine, I had to let him go.

[Q] Playboy: We hear he got work. About the Fifties: Were any of your people ever the targets of McCarthy's anti-Communist witch-hunts?

[A] Gleason: There was a guy who owned a supermarket chain, and he was putting everybody on this list. CBS, NBC and ABC were all kowtowing to this guy; they were scared to death of him. He was going around to all shows—Sid Caesar's, [Milton] Berle's, any show that he thought had a Red on its staff. He had this power because he owned these supermarkets and wouldn't accept the sponsors' products in his stores.

He finally came up to see me and said that I had a writer on the show who was a Commie and I was to get rid of him. So I called everybody on the staff down into the main room of the offices, where I had this supermarket guy, and I said, "You're now going to see me throw a son of a bitch out the door!" And I threw him out.

[Q] Playboy: You've never received an Emmy award for your television accomplishments—a fact many people find astounding. What would you trade for one?

[A] Gleason: Absolutely nothing. It's a joke now. I wouldn't trade for any award. They really don't mean anything. Think of some of the people who won these awards—people you've never seen again! The only time I was nominated, Danny Thomas won. At least, Audrey, Art and June Taylor won them.

[Q] Playboy: You've been known to say you don't think you have a "motion-picture personality." How do you figure that?

[A] Gleason: No, I don't. I can be interesting in a picture through my acting, but I don't have the personality that would lead a picture—unless it was a comedy and it fit me.

[Q] Playboy: One exception may be the 1962 film Gigot, the Chaplinesque tale about a deaf-mute Parisian janitor. That, we understand, was your favorite performance. What did you achieve there that you haven't in other roles?

[A] Gleason: Well, Gigot really fit me. First of all, my performance was all pantomime. Expressing yourself in pantomime is a hell of a lot more difficult than if you use words. So it was an achievement. Plus, I wrote the story and the musical score for the picture. It was a ham actor's dream, a nice ego trip. And it got very good critical acclaim. I'm proud of that.

[Q] Playboy: Some critics complained, though, that it was a little heavy-handed in the pathos department.

[A] Gleason: Comedy without pathos is like sitting down to a meal without bread.

[Q] Playboy: Not everybody needs that much bread with his meals.

[A] Gleason:I do. Pathos is a very important comedic element. It's a strange thing, too, that all good comedians can make an audience cry, with the exception of one of the greatest—Groucho Marx. His character didn't lend itself to it; I don't know whether or not he even wanted to do it.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us: In 1968, you persuaded Groucho to join you as a cast member in Otto Preminger's appropriately titled stinker Skidoo. Did he ever forgive you?

[A] Gleason: [Wistfully] It might've taken him a while. I got Groucho to play God in the picture. They were looking for somebody and I suggested Groucho. They leaped. So I called him up and he said, "I don't want to work." I said, "Come on, it's only a couple of days—we'll have some fun!" George Raft, Mickey Rooney and Peter Lawford were also in the cast. So Groucho agreed. Then, right after he got on the picture, Preminger started in on him, giving him a hard time. And Groucho was old and feeble. Preminger, what a son of a bitch!

Right at the beginning of shooting, Preminger started berating Frankie Avalon, who was in the cast, and, Christ, it was just terrible to see. Very embarrassing. So when that was over, I said, "Otto, come here." I said [stage whispers], "If you ever talk to me like that, I will hit you over the head with a fuckin' chair! Just remember." From then on, he was as gentle as the rain with me.

The picture turned out to be the greatest meatball that was ever made! Coming out of the theater after the premiere, I told Preminger, "I hope your hair falls out!" [Preminger, of course, was already a cue ball.—Ed.] And the strange thing is that, in one San Francisco theater, Skidoo played for years. I guess audiences went in there to masturbate or something, because they certainly couldn't have been looking at the picture.

Jesus, if you want to hear picture stories, here's the greatest one in the world: John Huston is directing the picture about the whale, Moby Dick. They're on location in this little village, where all the natives know everything that's going on. They hear that Huston needs an actor with one leg and, in this town, there happens to be a guy with one leg. Suddenly, this Irish friend of his becomes the guy's agent and tells him [in a brogue] "All right, let me do all the business."

Before long, word gets to Huston that there's this soul with one leg available and that his "agent" is talking about hundreds of dollars. On the day they arrange a meeting, Huston is standing on the end of a pier. This guy with the one leg and a crutch comes hobbling up with his manager, and they're talking about all the money they're gonna make. They get to Huston and the agent says, "Here he is!" Huston looks at the guy, then says, "Wrong leg."

[Q] Playboy: Even you've admitted that some of your most recent pictures have been, at best, disappointing. What, for instance, possessed you to make The Sting II?

[A] Gleason: [Unhesitatingly] Money! Sting II was trying to live on the reputation of the original. When we were making it, I knew we were headed for disaster. The script they first brought to me was very good. Then they started to "fix" it and, once they start doing that, anything can happen. Usually, trouble starts.

[Q] Playboy: Was it simply money, then, that drew you to the Burt Reynolds—Hal Needham Smokey and the Bandit trilogy?

[A] Gleason: Well, I didn't get a great deal of money for the first Bandit. When I saw the script of that one, I turned it down. I said, "How dare they bring me this?" Then I started to think about how I could play a redneck sheriff differently from anybody else. I thought the pencil mustache would be an interesting touch, and I started to get into it. But there wasn't even a scene between Burt and me, so I wrote a scene for us myself. That's the only time we met in the picture, and here I was chasing him all over Florida and Georgia.

[Q] Playboy: What's your appraisal of Reynolds' career?

[A] Gleason: He's never done a picture that even approaches his potential. I've seen him and he has, you know, moves. He moves just right, has great acting ability and he can do comedy. He could even be 20,000 times better than he was in Deliverance if he got the right part. Given the opportunity, he'll be a riot.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, your performance in The Hustler as Minnesota Fats, for which you earned an Oscar nomination, has been regarded as your finest on film. Have you ever heard from the real Fats?

[A] Gleason: You know, his name wasn't Minnesota Fats then! It was New York Fats, and when the picture came out, he immediately changed it. I heard he tried to sue 20th Century Fox, but they sent him a couple of letters and he shut up right away. [Excitedly] And I could beat him left-handed, playing pool. Left-handed! Every time Willie Mosconi plays him on TV, Willie has to miscue three or four times, because otherwise, the poor bum would run out on him. He can't play pool. He wanted to cash in.

[Q] Playboy: Eight years have passed since your triple-bypass operation, yet you still play golf every day when you're not working. Can we assume that the heart-attack nightmare is a thing of the past and that you're now feeling spry?

[A] Gleason: Oh, I've never felt better. Whatever they did to my heart, they must have done it right.

[Q] Playboy: You were on stage in Chicago, doing Sly Fox in 1978, when the heart attack hit, but the show did go on, didn't it?

[A] Gleason: I wouldn't walk off a stage if my legs were falling off! But that night, when the pain started, I'd never felt anything like it before, where I wanted to get the hell off. Fortunately, it was near the end of the show, but, boy, did I want to quit. Then it subsided, so afterward, Mare and I went to a restaurant and I had some clams and some booze. Then this pain came over me again. I got up and went out in front of the restaurant. I knew something was happening. I didn't have the slightest idea what—I wasn't scared. I've never been scared about things like that.

[Q] Playboy: Like death?

[A] Gleason: It's ridiculous to be afraid of death. No matter how frightened you are, you're still going to die.

[Q] Playboy: Does your pragmatism come from what we've heard you believe regarding the afterlife?

[A] Gleason: Well, reincarnation would be ideal. If you didn't do it right the first time, you could come back and try it all over again. I just hope I'm doing it right, so I don't have to come back.

[Q] Playboy: You don't want to come back?

[A] Gleason: What for? Maybe if I could come back in 1000 years and see all the new stuff.... But just to come right back and say, "Oh, Christ, the same old stuff....!"

[Q] Playboy: Has it occurred to you that you could probably stave off that eventuality longer if you stopped smoking? You plow through, what, five packs a day?

[A] Gleason: [Sighs] Yeah, it's a very dubious distinction to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day. After my operation, though, my doctor made a terrible mistake. In my presence, he said to Marilyn, "I don't understand it—the bum smokes five packs a day and his lungs are as pink as a baby's!" She went crazy and said, "What did you tell him that for?"

But if I were to get anything, I would have had it by now. I mean, it's just your constitution. Quitting, I think, would affect me worse. Whatever you give up, you have to substitute somehow, usually by eating 40 pounds of candy a day. Now, who the hell knows what I would substitute for smoking?

[Q] Playboy: Jackie, is there anything you do in moderation? Or is everything grander, bigger than life?

[A] Gleason: Well, there's nothing too grand about my ordinary life. The only things I do in a grand manner have to do with show business. I have a little piece of wood on my desk with an inscription on it: Three Elephants are always better than one. And that's my philosophy, my show-business philosophy.

[Q] Playboy: Can you imagine your life outside show business?

[A] Gleason: Sure. I would have shined actors' shoes.

"All of sudden, I'm a genius. You know what a genius is? It's a guy who knows that he isn't one."

"Tragically, many people who are fat can't make a living, make friends, do anything. Show business is different."

"Hugo looked at the check, went over to a telephone, dialed a number and said, 'Hello, Juilliard? Fuck you!'"