\n<\/p>\n
Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, the wife of a guffawing, rubber-limbed sewer worker forever mired in a blowhard neighbor\u2019s get-rich-quick schemes and other hazards of life on the classic 1950s sitcom \u201cThe Honeymooners,\u201d died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 99. <\/p>\n
Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by her son, Randolph Charles.<\/p>\n
She was the last survivor of a cast of four that dominated the Saturday night viewing habits of millions in the golden age of live television, and for decades afterward on rerun broadcasts and home video. Jackie Gleason<\/a> (Ralph Kramden) died in 1987; Audrey Meadows<\/a> (Ralph\u2019s wife, Alice) in 1996; and Art Carney<\/a> (Ed Norton) in 2003.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an age when status symbols in a gritty Brooklyn tenement were telephones, television sets and refrigerators, the Kramdens had none on a bus driver\u2019s $62 a week. Reflecting America\u2019s working-class experience, they struggled for a better life, shared disappointments and had fun, even if there was no uranium mine in Asbury Park and no market for glow-in-the-dark wallpaper, no-cal pizza or \u201cKramMar\u2019s Delicious Mystery Appetizer,\u201d which turned out to be dog food.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Trixie, Ms. Randolph played the upstairs wife who crossed her arms and commiserated with her best friend, Alice, over addlepated husbands who somehow got drunk on grape juice, found a suitcase of the mob\u2019s counterfeit cash, invented a \u201chandy\u201d kitchen tool that could \u201ccore a<\/em> apple\u201d and, after waiting all year for the convention of their International Order of Friendly Raccoons, took the wrong train.<\/p>\n While her character was less developed than the others, Ms. Randolph was revered by aficionados as the last living link to the inspired lunacy of a show that had a cultlike following, with fan clubs, esoteric trivia contests and memorabilia sales. At a 1984 Long Island meeting<\/a> of the Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners, or RALPH, one could buy a size-52 bus driver\u2019s uniform or a coveted Trixie apron.<\/p>\n Ms. Randolph appeared in the program\u2019s heyday from 1951 to 1957. It was first a skit on \u201cCavalcade of Stars,\u201d a DuMont network variety show featuring Mr. Gleason. From 1952 to 1954, it was a segment on CBS\u2019s \u201cThe Jackie Gleason Show.\u201d In 1955-56, it was a self-contained half-hour CBS series, whose 39 episodes were filmed before a live audience of 1,000. Finally in 1957, it reappeared as part of \u201cThe Jackie Gleason Show.\u201d<\/p>\n At the peak of the show\u2019s popularity, Ms. Randolph was its lowest-salaried star at $500 a week. Mr. Gleason had contracts that paid millions, but he covered all the production costs and took $65,000 to $70,000 an episode. Mr. Carney was paid $3,500 and Ms. Meadows $2,000 weekly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The cast had no illusions about making television history, and for Ms. Randolph, \u201cThe Honeymooners\u201d was hardly even a full-time job. There was only one rehearsal, hours before airtime. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe never saw Jackie until 11 a.m. on Saturday, the morning of the show,\u201d she recalled in an interview with The New York Times. \u201cAt lunchtime there was just one run-through with Jackie. He said that comedy didn\u2019t work if it was overrehearsed.\u201d<\/p>\n She was born Joyce Sirola in Detroit on Oct. 21, 1924, one of two children of Carl and Mary Sirola. Her father, a Finnish immigrant, was a butcher.<\/p>\n She graduated from Cooley High School in Detroit and moved to New York in 1943. She began acting at 19, joining a road company production of \u201cStage Door.\u201d<\/p>\n After touring with \u201cAbie\u2019s Irish Rose\u201d and \u201cGood Night, Ladies,\u201d she made her Broadway debut in 1945 in \u201cA Goose for the Gander,\u201d starring Gloria Swanson. In the late 1940s, she was increasingly on television, seen with Eddie Cantor, Danny Thomas, Fred Allen and the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Gleason spotted her in a 1951 chewing-gum commercial and hired her for a skit on his \u201cCavalcade of Stars.\u201d She later joined \u201cThe Honeymooners,\u201d replacing Elaine Stritch as Trixie after one performance. By then she was known as Joyce Randolph.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Honeymooners\u201d was the high point of her career, but it allowed time for many other television roles, mostly as a victim of murder and mayhem. \u201cIn the past year,\u201d a 1952 New York Daily News profile said, \u201cTV actress Joyce Randolph has been shot 14 times, strangled four times, stabbed with a penknife three times, tossed out of windows twice, and run down by a speeding limousine once.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1955, Ms. Randolph married Richard Charles, a business executive. They had a son, Randolph. Her husband died in 1997. <\/p>\n Information on survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n After leaving \u201cThe Honeymooners,\u201d which was revived with various casts in the \u201960s and \u201970s, she found herself typecast and largely gave up acting, except for occasional television and personal appearances.<\/p>\n Ms. Randolph dedicated an eight-foot bronze statue<\/a> of Mr. Gleason at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in 2000. She got a standing ovation<\/a> at a U.S.O. gala in New York in 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess all those young Marines watch television,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n