Joyce Randolph, golden age TV star who played Trixie on ‘The Honeymooners,’ dies

Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie, the wife of New York City sewer worker Ed Norton, on the landmark 1950s sitcom “The Honeymooners,” has died at home in Manhattan at age 99.

Randolph, who died Saturday of natural causes, was the last surviving principal cast member of “The Honeymooners,” the 1955-56 CBS series starring Jackie Gleason as loud-mouthed bus driver Ralph Kramden, Audrey Meadows as his long-suffering wife, Alice; and Art Carney as Ralph’s lovably dopey pal Norton, the self-described “subterranean sanitation engineer.” Randolph died at her home on the Upper West Side, her son, Randolph Charles, told the Associated Press on Sunday.

The memorable lower-middle-class characters living in a Brooklyn apartment building were created several years earlier for recurring “Honeymooners” comedy sketches on “Cavalcade of Stars,” the hour-long comedy-variety show Gleason hosted on the DuMont network from 1950-52.

A Detroit native who launched her acting career on stage as a teenager and moved to New York City during World War II, Randolph had a few years of live television experience behind her when she landed the role of Trixie.

Randolph had first appeared opposite Gleason on “Cavalcade of Stars” in a serious sketch about a vaudevillian and his former sweetheart. When an actress was needed to play Norton’s wife in “The Honeymooners” sketches a few weeks later, Gleason told the casting director, “Get me that serious actress.”

In a 2007 interview with the Asbury Park Press, Randolph said, “I just played me, to a great extent ... but trying to be Trixie, of course, and married to that crazy man.”

As Alice was with Ralph, Trixie was the voice of reason in dealing with Norton.

After Norton loses his job — “17 years in the sewer and now everything down the drain,” he laments — a sympathetic Trixie tells Alice, “You can take the man out of the sewer, but you can’t take the sewer out of the man.”

In a 2004 interview with the New York Daily News, Randolph described Carney as “a sweetheart of a man.” And Gleason, she said, was a great guy. “But he was odd. He kept his distance, was very much the boss. But he was always a gentleman.”

Although one biographer portrayed Gleason as a monster, Randolph did not see him that way. “He was tough on the writers, but he was a perfectionist — and just look at the writing he got out of them.”

When Gleason left “Cavalcade of Stars” in 1952 and launched “The Jackie Gleason Show” on CBS, “The Honeymooners” sketches continued to be a popular element of the new hour-long comedy-variety show.

They were so popular that “The Honeymooners” became a half-hour series in 1955. The 39 episodes of the series were filmed before a live audience at the Adelphi Theatre in Manhattan.

Although he had a contract to do more episodes, Gleason ended the series after one season, saying that “the excellence of the material could not be maintained, and I had too much fondness for the show to cheapen it.”

“The Honeymooners” resumed as sketches with Gleason, Carney, Meadows and Randolph for another season when “The Jackie Gleason Show” returned in the fall of 1956. Gleason died in 1987, Meadows in 1996 and Carney, who went on to win a best actor Oscar for “Harry and Tonto,” in 2003.

“Never in our wildest dreams did we think we were making TV history,” Randolph told the New York Daily News in 2004.

The daughter of a meat market owner from Finland, Randolph was born Joyce Sirola on Oct. 21, 1924, in Detroit.

She began attending a speech and drama school in downtown Detroit a couple of nights a week while still in high school. At 18, she landed a small part in a touring company of “The Importance of Being Earnest” that came to Detroit.

She later toured with “A Goose for the Gander,” starring Gloria Swanson and Conrad Nagel, which had a brief run on Broadway in 1945.

Moving into live television after the war, Randolph had roles on shows such as “Four Star Revue” and “The Colgate Comedy Hour.” She also appeared in so many murder mystery dramas that at least one newspaper writer referred to her as “the most murdered girl on television.”

In 1955, while doing “The Honeymooners” series, Randolph married advertising executive Richard Charles, who died in 1997. She is survived by their son, Randolph Charles.

After leaving the Gleason show, Randolph performed on Broadway, did summer stock, made commercials and had guest appearances on various television shows. But her association as Trixie often stood in the way of landing serious roles.

“But that was OK, “ she said in the Daily News interview, “I was happy being a wife and a new mother.”

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.