Joyce Randolph, star of ‘The Honeymooners’, dies aged 99

Joyce Randolph, who starred in the 1950s CBS sitcom The Honeymooners, has died at the age of 99.

According to Associated Press, Randolph’s son and only surviving family member Randolph Charles conveyed in a statement that she died of natural causes while in her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Saturday evening (January 13).

The stage and television actress was most well-known for her role as Trixie Norton on The Honeymooners, starring in an ensemble cast that included Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden, Audrey Meadows as Kramden’s witty and tenacious wife Alice, and Art Carney as Ed Norton, a dimwitted-yet-buoyant sewer worker and husband to Randolph’s character.

The sitcom, which was also created by Gleason and loosely based on his childhood, aired on CBS between 1955 and 1956. Lasting one season consisting of 39 episodes, The Honeymooners followed the foursome in their daily lives as residents of New York City. Randolph once expressed that an episode in which the character Ed Norton was sleepwalking was a favourite of hers. “Carney calls out, ‘Thelma?!’ He never knew his wife’s real name,” she told the Television Academy Foundation.

Randolph was the last surviving member of The Honeymooners’ main cast.

Prior to her role on The Honeymooners, the actress played a small role in the 1950 Broadway production, Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath. Following her stint as a lead actress on The Honeymooners however, Randolph struggled to find other acting roles as she had been typecast by directors as Trixie Norton. In a 1994 interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Randolph stated: “For years after that role, directors would say: ‘No, we can’t use her. She’s too well-known as Trixie.'”

Following Randolph’s stint as a lead actress on the sitcom, she put her acting career on hold to focus on her marriage and motherhood. She had married marketing executive Richard Charles in 1955, just as The Honeymooners began airing. Charles passed away in 1997.

The actress would only come to learn of the impact of her role as Trixie Norton in the 1980s, when his son went to college. In a 2000 interview with the San Antonio Express, she said: “One year while (my son) was in college at Yale, he came home and said, ’Did you know that guys and girls come up to me and ask, ‘Is your mom really Trixie?’”

In an interview she gave to The New York Times in 2007, Randolph expressed that she had only just begun receiving residuals for the programme, and that she had never received prior compensation despite its popularity in syndicated programming.

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