Pert Kelton

Pert Kelton (Great Falls (Montana), October 14, 19071 - Ridgewood, October 30, 1968) was an American vaudeville, radio, film and television actress. She was the first actress to play Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners, opposite Jackie Gleason, and worked as a stage actress in a dozen Broadway productions between 1925 and 1968.

Born in Great Falls, Montana, Kelton was a young comedian in A-list movies during the 1930s, often playing the funny and equally attractive best friend of the female lead character. She had a memorable performance in 1933 as the singer "Trixie" on The Bowery, alongside Wallace Beery, George Raft, Jackie Cooper and Fay Wray. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the film was about Steve Brodie, the first man who supposedly jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge and lived to tell the tale.

Kelton played the prostitute Minnie in Gregory LaCava's film Bed of Roses (1933), filmed before the Hays Code alongside Constance Bennett and Joel McCrea.

Ironically, given his subsequent Hollywood blacklisting, Kelton's last film for several years was Whispering Enemies (1939). His next performance took place on television in The Honeymooners and in other sketches on the Gleason show. The abrupt departure from the cinema due to the blacklist was explained as a result of the actress having heart problems.

In the 1940s Kelton was a familiar voice on radio shows such as Easy Aces, It's Always Albert, The Stu Erwin Show and the 1941 series We Are Always Young. In 1949 he voiced five different characters on the Texaco Star Theater radio show. She was also a regular on The Henry Morgan Show, and in the early 1950s she played a maid on Monty Woolley's The Magnificent Montague.

Kelton played Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners sketches in the DuMont Television Network production Cavalcade of Stars. Those numbers formed the basis for the 1955 CBS sitcom The Honeymooners. Jackie Gleason played her husband, Ralph Kramden, and Art Carney was their neighbor, Ed Norton. Elaine Stritch was Trixie, Norton's dancing wife, before being replaced by Joyce Randolph.

Kelton performed in the original sketches, generally lasting 10 to 20 minutes, shorter than the later half-hour series and the one-hour musical versions of the 1960s. This early version of The Honeymooners was darker and tougher than that of CBS, after Kelton was included in the Hollywood blacklist during McCarthyism, and in which she was replaced by Audrey Meadows.

In the 1960s she was invited to work on Gleason's CBS show, playing Alice's mother in an episode of the hour-long musical version of The Honeymooners (also known as The Color Honeymooners), with Sheila MacRae. like a young Alice.

In 1963 Kelton appeared in the series The Twilight Zone, playing Robert Duvall's authoritarian mother in the episode 'Miniature'.

In his last years Kelton participated in commercial advertisements for the Spic and Span brand, his public image being strongly linked to it.

Kelton debuted as a theater actress on the Broadway circuit at the age of 17, performing in Jerome Kern's play Sunny, in which she played "Magnolia" and sang a song of the same name.

Years later she was nominated twice for the Tony Awards: for Best Supporting Actress in Frank Henry Loesser's Greenwillow (1960), and in Spofford (1967–68). However, her most notable performance on Broadway was as the impatient Mrs. Paroo (Marian Paroo's mother) in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1957), a performance she repeated in its 1962 film adaptation Live of Illusion, the role for which she is perhaps best remembered.

Pert Kelton was co-owner of the Warner Kelton Hotel, built in the late 1920s, at 6326 Lexington Avenue, Los Angeles. The hotel served actors and musicians such as Cary Grant, Orry-Kelly, and Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. In the back it had a small open-air theater, next to a wishing well that may have inspired the song "There's a Small Hotel" from the musical "On Your Toes (1936)".

Pert Kelton died on October 30, 1968, due to heart disease in Ridgewood, New Jersey. She was 61 years old. His remains were cremated and the ashes given to her family.