Jackie Gleason - The Life Of Riley

In 1949, (the dawn of television) a near unknown Jackie Gleason starred in the original version of the tv series "The Life Of Riley" as Chester A. Riley with Rosemary DeCamp as his wife "Peg", Lanny Rees as his son "Junior" and Gloria Winters as his daughter "Babs". Chester worked in a California airplane factory and between there and home was constantly getting into trouble.
"What a revoltin' development this is!" was the quote made famous by Riley, and as we all know, Jackie went on to bigger and better things in the future, with this new form of entertainment we called television. enjoy!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Jackie
• Gleason
• Rosemary
• DeCamp
• Life
• Of
• Riley
• tv

[pgh45rpms]

William Bendix originated the Riley character on radio. When the first tv series was planned, Bendix was in a tight film contract that prevented him from taking the role.

[Starcastle2009]

Gleason abandoned the role to do his weekly show on the DuMont Network.

[AkiroXKE]

William Bendix originated the role on radio, so maybe that's why audiences rejected Gleason as Riley, even though both actors had similar voices.

[WSenator1]

I just took a look at the William Bendix "Rileys" on YT and he sure played the role different from Jackie Gleason. Bendix played him as a loveable lug, while Gleason played him as just a lug! Gleason played Riley as he would Ralph Kramden later on, which of course was classic, but I could understand why some people would have preferred Bendix when this version came out.

[NolanKevin7]

Now that the great one is not with us anymore, someone should release these shows on dvd/blu-ray. The show isn't that good, but the value is in the fact that it was 1949. This is one of the first family sit-coms ever.

[apk1215]

@fromthesidelines that's a sad story. :(

[fromthesidelines]

There was no laugh track in the Gleason edition of the series because Irving Brecher later recalled that because of production costs, he couldn't afford to add one at the time. When he reissued the series in January 1977 (after a long legal challenge from Jackie Gleason, who simply didn't want his version to be shown again), he was finally able to add them for syndication.

[smileyg333]

This old man at work always talks about this show to me cuz my name is also riley lolz

[cippy2k]

anybody know if this is on dvd

[noutube]

i love 1940s family values