Joyce Randolph, the veteran stage and television actor who played the intelligent Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners” and was the perfect foil to her dumb TV husband, has died. She was 99 years old.
Randolph died of natural causes Saturday night at his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side, his son Randolph Charles told The Associated Press on Sunday.
She was the last surviving main character of the beloved sitcom of the golden age of television in the 1950s.
“The Honeymooners” was a loving depiction of life in a Brooklyn tenement, based in part on star Jackie Gleason’s childhood. Gleason played abusive bus driver Ralph Kramden. Audrey Meadows plays the wise and strong-willed wife Alice, and Art Carney plays the cheerful sewer worker Ed Norton. Alice and Trixie learn from her husband's various foibles, such as unknowingly promoting dog food as a popular snack, trying in vain to resist a rent increase, and freezing in the winter when the heat is cut off. I often sympathized with their misfortunes.
Randolph later listed some of his favorite episodes, including the episode where Ed sleepwalks.
“And Carney yelled, 'Thelma?!' He didn't know his wife's real name,” she later told the Television Academy Foundation.
Born in 1950 as a skit that aired regularly on Gleason's variety show “Cavalcade of Stars,” “The Honeymooners” still ranks as one of the all-time favorites in television comedy. The show's popularity increased after Gleason switched networks to “The Jackie Gleason Show.” After that, it became a full-fledged series for one season from 1955 to 1956.
These 39 episodes became a staple of syndicated programming that aired nationally and internationally.
In a January 2007 interview with The New York Times, Randolph said he had not received any compensation for the remaining 39 episodes. She said she finally started receiving royalties after “lost” episodes from her variety show were discovered.
After five years as a member of Gleason's on-air repertoire company, Randolph effectively retired, choosing to focus full-time on marriage and motherhood.
“I haven’t missed anything by not working all the time,” she said. She “didn't want my wonderful son to be her nanny.”
However, decades after leaving the show, Randolph still had many fans and received dozens of letters a week. Well into her 80s, she was a regular at the bar downstairs at Sardi's, drinking her favorite White Cadillac concoction (Dewar's and milk) and looking across the bar at the portraits of four characters from the sitcom. I liked chatting with patrons who recognized me.
Randolph said the show's impact on television viewers wasn't realized until the early 1980s.
“One year, when[my son]was at Yale, he came home and said, 'People come up to me and ask, 'Is your mom really Trixie?' Did you know?'' she told the San Antonio Express. “I guess he didn't pay much attention to it until then.”
She previously lamented that playing Trixie would limit her career.
“For years after I cast that role, directors said, 'No, we can't use her.' She's too famous as Trixie,” Randolph told the Orlando Sentinel in 1993. .
Gleason died in 1987 at the age of 71, followed by Meadows in 1996 and Carney in 2003. Gleason had revived The Honeymooners in the 1960s with Jane Keene as Trixie.
Randolph was born Joyce Sirola in Detroit in 1924 and joined the road company Stage Door when she was around 19 years old. From there she went to New York where she appeared in many Broadway shows.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she frequently appeared on television with stars such as Eddie Cantor, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, and Fred Allen.
Randolph first met Gleason when she appeared in the Clorets commercial “Cavalcade of Stars,” and The Great One took a liking to her. She didn't even have an agent at the time.
Randolph spent his retirement traveling to Broadway openings and fundraisers, working with the USO, and visiting his favorite Manhattan hangouts such as Angus, Chez Josephine, and the Ram's Club.
Her husband, Richard Lincoln, a wealthy marketing executive who died in 1997, was president of the Rams drama club, and she reigned as “First Lady.” They had one son, Charles.
