For TV’s Trixie, the Honeymoon Lives On
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By GLENN COLLINS
Published: January 27, 2007
It is 5:01 p.m. and Joyce Randolph, a k a Trixie Norton, is holding forth in the downstairs bar at Sardi’s, sipping her favorite formulation of the White Cadillac, Dewar’s and milk. “I think it does your stomach good,” she is saying. “The Scotch. The milk.”

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Sardi’s, with caricatures of the “Honeymooners” cast above the bar, is a favorite haunt for Miss Randolph, who remains a participant in New York’s theatrical community.


Associated Press
“The Honeymooners,” made in 1955 and ’56, is still in reruns with Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph.
Before her, flanking the silver Rolex clock above the bar, are the four caricatures of the sacred sitcom’s 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 Sardi’s, José 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. “It’s girls’ night out,” said Ms. Terracciano, who would soon be heading for “Mary Poppins” with her mother and their friend Kathy Cocoman.

“We’re 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 show’s 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 can’t 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.”

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 Sardi’s at the Angus McIndoe restaurant, another 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 Sardi’s 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 habitué 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 pâté. “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 Randolph’s 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 wouldn’t miss the Lambs lunch at Sardi’s 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 group’s gala at Cipriani 42nd Street for a standing ovation. “I think they were applauding because I’m so old,” she allowed. “I guess all those young marines watch television.”

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Then there was Miss Randolph’s 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 my husband, Ed.’ ”

Sometimes hanging out becomes a “Honeymooners” episode. On a recent evening she met friends at the Sardi’s bar, then found herself talking Trixie with theaterbound admirers who aimed digital flash her way. That took so long that she decided to stay for dinner there, and was seated next to Neil Sedaka’s table. They had never met; dish ensued. A nearby patron sent over some wine, then insisted on yet another picture: Mr. Sedaka and Miss Randolph together in a baby-you’re-the-greatest moment.

Miss Randolph gave her first drink order at Sardi’s six decades ago. She was a Finnish-American actress from Detroit, Joyce Sirola, who arrived in Manhattan in 1943. She took roles on Broadway and landed jobs on that fledgling television thing.

In 1951 she caught Gleason’s eye in a Clorets commercial and graduated to a serious skit on “Cavalcade of Stars,” his variety show on the DuMont Television Network in those pre-CBS years. Soon, she was Trixie.

Some New York write-ups referred to her as the Garbo of Detroit, and to Miss Randolph “that’s still a mystery,” she said. “I was a nobody in Detroit.” She sipped some of her White Cadillac. “Why Garbo? Well, she was Scandinavian — and so was I.”

Miss Randolph is proud of her work as Alice Kramden’s co-conspirator, the spiky marital partner of the Slinky-limbed sewer worker Ed Norton, “especially in the episodes where I have more than four lines,” she said slyly.

The show keeps addicting new generations. Mr. Broderick said simply that “every situation human beings can have is in one of these shows.”

“From these four characters springs everything,” he added.

Miss Randolph said that she received no compensation in residuals for the classic 39 shows from 1955 to 1956.

Finally, with the discovery of “lost” episodes from the variety hours, she began receiving royalties.

Suddenly, it is 5:29 p.m., and Miss Randolph is striding briskly westward from Sardi’s, heading not to the moon, where Ralph Kramden so yearned to propel his Alice, but to a fund-raising mixer at Gallagher’s Steak House.

On Eighth Avenue her interviewer offers to find a cab, but she snares one herself, nearly immediately. “You have to be bold,” she said, “when you’re alone.”