(DailyDig.com) – A veteran of theater and screen, Joyce Randolph, has died. Her performance as smart Trixie Norton in “The Honeymooners” was a great contrast to her TV husband’s naiveté. Her age was 99.
Art Carney portrayed Ed Norton, who was married to the character played by Randolph. Jackie Gleason played Ralph Kramden, and Audrey Meadows portrayed Alice Kramden. Randolph was a cherished character in the 1950s TV sitcom.
Randolph Charles, her son, said that his mother died on January 13 at their home in Manhattan on the Upper West Side from natural causes.
Based partially on Jackie Gleason’s background, “The Honeymooners” was a loving depiction of life in a Brooklyn tenement. As wives, Trixie and Alice often commiserated for the blunders that befell their husbands.
Randolph decided to devote herself fully to marriage and children after spending five years in Gleason’s on-air repertory group. She retired, stating that she did not want her amazing boy to be raised by a nanny.
Randolph continued to get hundreds of messages each week from fans, even after she left the program decades earlier. Until she was well into her 80s, she remained a fixture at Sardi’s basement bar, where she enjoyed talking with customers who knew her from the sitcom’s portrait displayed above the bar.
Joyce Sirola was born in 1924 in Detroit, and she joined a traveling troupe called “Stage Door” when she was around 19 years old. She continued on to New York, where she was a featured performer in many Broadway productions.
She had a busy television career in the ’40s and ’50s, sharing the screen with icons like Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, and Danny Thomas.
Randolph first crossed paths with Gleason during her appearance on “Cavalcade of Stars” in a Clorets commercial, and “The Great One” quickly warmed up to her.
During her retirement, Randolph often attended fundraisers and Broadway production openings.
From her marriage to the late Richard Lincoln Charles, who died in 1997, Randolph had a son named Randolph Richard Charles.
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