On This Day in History, February 8: An Unforgettable Brooklyn Housewife
“One of these days — POW, right in the kisser,” Jackie Gleason, as Ralph Kramden (the blustery Brooklyn bus driver), would say to Audrey Meadows as Alice Kramden in so many TV episodes of the sitcom “The Honeymooners.” Or he’d shake his fist in her face and threaten “To the moon, Alice!” It never seemed to faze Alice Kramden, but it was so nice when he’d say to her, “Baby, you’re the greatest.” The Kramdens lived in a Bensonhurst flat with an ice box and no telephone.
Audrey Meadows was born on Feb. 8, 1924, in Wu Chang, China, to Episcopal missionaries. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was 5 so that she, her sister Jayne and two younger brothers could be educated here. At 16, Meadows performed as a coloratura soprano at Carnegie Hall. During World War II she entertained the troops in USO show companies, including a part in Mike Todd’s Mexican Hayride. In the late ’40s Meadows played an assortment of characters on the “Bob and Ray” comedy TV show. She was in a roadshow company of Broadway’s High Button Shoes, then came a role in the 1951 Broadway show Top Banana. She was on TV in commercials, comedy sketches and as a singer, and took over the role of Alice in “Honeymooners” sketches on “The Jackie Gleason Show” in 1952.