Happy birthday Joyce Randolph!
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Shadow2700 — 9 years ago(October 21, 2016 06:51 AM)
Happy Birthday, and many more!
For TVs Trixie, the Honeymoon Lives On
By GLENN COLLINSJAN. 27, 2007
It is 5:01 p.m. and Joyce Randolph, a k a Trixie Norton, is holding forth in the downstairs bar at Sardis, sipping her favorite formulation of the White Cadillac, Dewars and milk. I think it does your stomach good, she is saying. The Scotch. The milk.
Before her, flanking the silver Rolex clock above the bar, are the four caricatures of the sacred sitcoms characters: hers and the portraits of Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows and Art Carney of The Honeymooners.
She is strong of voice and precise of diction at 82, given to addressing people as Dear. How sweet it is, then, to hang out with Miss Randolph in one of her favorite haunts where the honeymoon is never over.
For his 16 years at Sardis, Jos Estevez, the perpetually amenable barkeep, has looked on as new customers enact the ritual. First, they register the likeness portrayed in the caricature. Then they study the face at the barstool. Always, there is the double take. And so it is tonight.
This is such a thrill! said Toni Terracciano from Bethpage, N.Y., putting aside her glass of cabernet to reach for a moment with Trixie. Its girls night out, said Ms. Terracciano, who would soon be heading for Mary Poppins with her mother and their friend Kathy Cocoman.
Were fans for so many years, said her mother, Pat Astarita. You were so wonderful on that show.
Miss Randolph smiled, and shook her head. It was the others, not me.
No, all of you were wonderful, Ms. Astarita insisted. I was about to cry. When I saw you.
True, five decades ago Miss Randolph was dubbed the Garbo of Detroit, but she genuinely seems to enjoy greeting Honeymoonies, as the shows most ardent fans are called. She is always available to smile and pose with them in a camera-phone flash.
I talk to everyone, she said. You cant be hoity.
She signs her name to Playbills and cocktail napkins. But I know what they really want is the name Trixie Norton, she said. So I sign that, too.
Sardis, with caricatures of the Honeymooners cast above the bar, is a favorite haunt for Miss Randolph, who remains a participant in New Yorks theatrical community. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
It has been 56 years since Miss Randolph assumed the role of Trixie, yet she is still revered as the surviving goddess of the celebrated screwball comedy from the golden age of television.
I am the last one left, Miss Randolph said a bit later, without drama. Even the girl who held the stopwatch, Joan Reichman Canale, is gone.
At the bar, Miss Randolph is Trixie-thin and perfectly put together in a brown brocade jacket that showcases an Art Deco gold necklace that she got from an old beau, she said when asked.
You would think that Trixie Norton would be some kind of battle-ax in person, but Joyce is so elegant and thin and pretty, the actor Matthew Broderick said later, when asked about his first meeting with Miss Randolph a few years back. That was down the block from Sardis at the Angus McIndoe restaurant, another111c of her favorites.
She does get around. A Broadway opening here, a fund-raiser there, a night of cabaret all of them are on her great circle route. Aside from Sardis and Angus, there is the Lambs Club on West 51st Street and Chez Josephine, a restaurant on West 42nd Street where she has been a habitu for decades.
I came here as a poor immigrant from France in the 1970s, said Jean-Claude Baker, proprietor of Chez Josephine, in his Gallic accent heavier than pt. And I watched The Honeymooners to help me to learn English. So when she first came in the restaurant with her husband 20 years ago, I was thrilled. We became friends right away!
He sighed. The only failure in her life is that she has not been able to make my English better.
It was at the Lambs, the theatrical club, that Miss Randolphs husband, Richard Lincoln Charles, a wealthy marketing executive, served as shepherd, or president; she was first lady. Mr. Charles died in 1997 at age 74. Their son, Randolph Richard Charles, 46, a marketing executive, lives in Philadelphia.
She is no longer first lady, but she wouldnt miss the Lambs lunch at Sardis on the first Tuesday of every month. At this gathering of a dozen longtime friends, it is the ritualistic duty of Jim Copening, a waiter at the restaurant since 1992, to write separate checks for all.
She is still active with the U.S.O., and on Pearl Harbor Day in December, she was called to the dais at the groups gala at Cipriani 42nd Street for a standing ovation. I think they were applauding because Im so old, she allowed. I guess all those young marines watch television.
The Honeymooners, made in 1955 and 56, is still in reruns with Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph. Credit Associated Press
Then there was Miss Randolphs recent role, as Trixie, in an unreleased independent film, Lips, shot in the Lips bar on Bank Street. They had me sit at the bar, saying, I have to get home to m