Word: gleason
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once upon a time, when television was young, there was a network known as DuMont. It was the home of Jackie Gleason and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and it broadcast the famous Army-McCarthy hearings in their entirety in 1954. But in 1955 it went out of business, and ever since, TV visionaries have dreamed of creating another commercial network to challenge the Big Three. A few half- hearted attempts have been made, but none have succeeded...
Only Eliza Gleason and Laurence Bouvard as Ken's sister and niece seem to realize that their jobs as actors don't end after their lines are said. Both create characters of some dimension, and Bouvard is especially good as a precious 13-year old whose dream of becoming a famous artist will never come true. Neither, though, can save a Fifth of July that's about as desirable as a fifth of castor...
...shift moods as radically as Nothing in Common does. Start with David Basner (Tom Hanks), prince of the yuppies, a man whose smooth rise in an ad agency is not allowed to interfere with his commitment to the uncommitted singles life. Then watch as his aged parents (Jackie Gleason and Eva Marie Saint) separate. The father loses his job and health just as the son is about to land a prize account. Now David must face the last, most painful transition that children have to make with their parents: role reversal. As they enter second childhood, he must become...
Liberty Weekend, some carped, was more about profits than patriotism, more about commerce than comity. The opening-night ceremony was a sentimentalized show-biz tribute that left no cliche unturned, a hokey combination of the old Jackie Gleason show from Miami Beach, the Rose Bowl parade and the Ziegfeld Follies. But what, after all, could be more American than that? Show biz, not solemnity, is an American hallmark; taste is not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. President Reagan's aides were concerned that their man would be demeaned by the Busby Berkeley choreography. Others joked about his pressing...
Still, every season someone attempts to revive the form. This year's example is Social Security, the bawdy but bland story of a Manhattan art dealer (Marlo Thomas), her suburban sister (Joanna Gleason), their respective husbands (Ron Silver and Kenneth Welsh) and the aged mother who drives them crazy (Olympia Dukakis). Playwright Andrew Bergman has written lustily funny movies (Blazing Saddles, Fletch), but he places only ticktock jokework on the stage. Worse, he creates situations of real pathos and then anesthetizes them. The matriarch is 80, unable to get around without a walker, unwilling to be left alone...