TV Land just finished running, as a tribute to Art Carney, a "marathon" of all 39 filmed episodes of The Honeymooners. I caught a few of the less-familiar ones and again marvelled at how good he was on that show. A year or three ago, I got a few folks all hot and bothered in an Internet discussion of Jackie Gleason by saying that I felt his rep as "The Great One" was overrated; that the best thing Mr. Gleason ever did for television was to hire Art Carney and not completely blast him off the screen. A star can do that…cutting down the other actors' roles, telling them not to do this or that. Berle was famous for that and so was Gleason, though Jackie never fully mastered the art of keeping Art in a strait-jacket. A Gleason show was woefully under-rehearsed: They did it until Jackie felt he had his part down, and then it was every man for himself. To my knowledge, Carney never went public with his belief that he was being deliberately handicapped but it was common knowledge within the business.
You can almost sense it in some episodes. The dullest ones keep Norton in the corners and out of the spotlight. The best ones give him something to do, preferably something physical and/or exasperating to Ralph: Norton poaching in the Kramden apartment to watch TV, Norton teaching Ralph how to play golf, Norton and Ralph rehearsing to do a TV commercial, Norton and Ralph handcuffed together, Norton and Ralph deciding to get drunk together, Norton prepping Ralph to go on a TV game show, Norton competing with Ralph in a costume competition, Norton sleepwalking, etc. Gleason used to say that The Honeymooners was the story of a couple that lived in near-poverty but kept going because of their love for each other. He was wrong. The Honeymooners was the story of friendship between a bus driver and a sewer worker, and it was the sewer worker who made it a classic.