Joyce Randolph, one of the stars of the 1950s CBS sitcom The Honeymooners, has died at the age of 99. According to an Associated Press report, Randolph passed away of natural causes at her Upper West Side Manhattan home on Saturday evening. She is survived by her son, Randolph Charles.
Randolph is best known for portraying Trixie Norton in The Honeymooners, which starred Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden, Audrey Meadows as Kramden’s wife Alice, and Art Carney as Norton, a dimwitted-yet-buoyant sewer worker and husband to Randolph’s character. The sitcom was created by Gleason and aired on CBS between 1955 and 1956, and Randolph once noted that an episode in which Carney’s character was sleepwalking was among her favourites.
Randolph was the last surviving member of The Honeymooners’ main cast. Before her role in the show, she played a small part in the 1950 Broadway production Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath. After the success of The Honeymooners, however, Randolph struggled to find other acting jobs due to being typecast as Trixie Norton.
Following her time on the show, Randolph put her acting career on hold to focus on her marriage and motherhood. She had married marketing executive Richard Charles in 1955, the same year The Honeymooners began airing. Charles passed away in 1997.
Despite Randolph’s relative obscurity in her later years, she remained beloved by fans of The Honeymooners. In a 2000 interview with the San Antonio Express, she revealed that her son would often be asked if his mother was truly Trixie Norton. And in a 2007 interview with The New York Times, Randolph stated that she had just started receiving residuals for the show and had never been compensated before that, despite its popularity in syndication
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