The Life of Riley
In the 1920s, America’s most popular comedians were on the radio: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Fanny Brice, Red Skelton, and more. Most told jokes or performed skits. When programs put a regular cast of characters in unusual situations for comedic effect, they created situation comedies. A situation comedy has recurring characters and in each episode the ensemble cast has to deal with new situations, comedically.
The Golden Age of Radio
The top situational comedies of the 1920s and ’30s were Fibber McGee and Molly, The Goldbergs, The Great Guildersleeve, and Our Miss Brooks. And it was all AM Radio, kids, in a wooden box with a big round dial and a single speaker. Families would crowd around this magic box after dinner and listen to sitcoms together, much as Simpsons devotees do today. One wag described the radio sitcom experience as “Like listening to the Sunday funnies.”
The earliest programs were big hits
Amos ’n’ Andy was the first sitcom, opening the door for the hundreds that followed. You can read about the radio and television versions of the Amos ’n’ Andy show and its social and racial implications in Do The Name Ruby Begonia Strike a Familiar Note?
The Life of Riley
This radio situation comedy ran for 252 episodes on the Blue (now NBC) Network from 1944-1951. The Life of Riley featured William Bendix as Chester A. Riley, a bumbling oaf. His catchphrase when he realized another one of his blunders had turned a small problem into a major disaster was, “What a revoltin’ development this is.”
Bendix had the starring role in the 1949 film version of The Life of Riley for RKO studios
Scheduling, contract provisions, and illness are three of the explanations for why Bendix was not in the 1949 TV version of The Life of Riley. No matter, the NBC network chose a young actor named Jackie Gleason to play the lead. Gleason wasn’t Riley any more than William Bendix was Babe Ruth. The show ran a single season because to Americans, Bendix was Chester A. Riley, and no one else would do.
NBC came back with another The Life of Riley in 1953
This time it starred the real Riley, William Bendix, as an aircraft riveter who lived at 1313 Blue View Terrace in Los Angeles with his wife Peggy and their kids, Babs and Junior. Riley rarely went to work, spending most of his time around the house getting underfoot. This time, the show ran for six seasons, never using a live or canned laugh track.
Why Riley?
One popular theory is that Riley was a real person. His name was Willy Reilly and he lived in Sligo, Ireland. Phrases.org tells us it might have been Willy they were talking about in an 1883 song with the chorus, “Is that Mr. Reilly, of whom they speak so highly?” It might have been Willy in the 1897 song titled The Best In the House is None Too Good for Reilly. When the Reillys made it to the United States, they became the Rileys.
We never know what we’ll find when we skip the obvious
Follow your <life of Riley> search past the paid placements, past the TV shows, and past Wikipedia. You will find Life of Riley Sunwashed Shorts, a New Zealand dog products site, hand-crafted luxury leather gifts, and Life of Riley Senior Care, whose website invites us to “take the first step toward a carefree, comfortable way of living for you or your loved one. “
Jackie Gleason got the last laugh
He ended up living the life of Riley. His Honeymooners sitcom (four characters on a single fixed set) ran for 26 episodes and became a part of American television history. Gleason’s character, city bus driver Ralph Kramden, was a large, loud bully (“To the moon, Alice!”). Ralph and his neighbor, city sewer worker Ed Norton, were always falling for get-rich-quick schemes, frustrating their wives Alice and Trixie.
Several versions of The Jackie Gleason Show ran from 1952 to 1970
At its most popular, it was a variety program hosted by Gleason and filmed in Miami Beach because that’s where he lived. Each week the show featured the June Taylor Dancers, a high-kicking chorus line of 16 beauties with long legs and dazzling show business smiles. The dancers were known for performing kaleidoscopic routines beneath overhead cameras, á la the Busby Berkley films of the 1930s. Later in life, June Taylor lived in Fort Lauderdale and choreographed the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Her sister married Gleason.
Gleason’s greatest film role was as Minnesota Fats (Rudolph Wanderone), co-starring with Fast Eddie Felsen (Paul Newman) in The Hustler in 1951. He’s best known for his worst role as the clownishly inept Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Burt Reynold’s Smokey and the Bandit films of the late ‘70s. His pretend southern accent is as awfully artificial as Pete’s (John Turturro) in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
From 1972 to 1980, Gleason was the host of golf’s annual Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic golf tournament. The Inverrary Country Club where it was played hosted 15 PGA and LPGA tournaments. I’ve played there many times, but Westside Investment Partners bought the 300 acres of lush, wooded parkland in 2020 for $24 million and closed it. Westside would like to devote 100 acres to municipal parks and use the other 200 acres for developing residential properties, commercial properties, or both.
Bonus
There have been two Life of Riley films. The first was in 1949, starring William Bendix. Movie reviews said “the man with the homely mug was his usual obstreperous self, exactly what the people wanted to see.” Young Moderns will likely think of the 2024 version, reported by Letterboxd as “Combining interviews with fly-on-the-wall filming gives an insight into the ‘Head Lesbian of the World’ as she navigates the world of celebrity and politics.”
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The author is a researcher, writer, ghostwriter, teacher, and storyteller who looks at old things in new ways, sees the commonplace in greater detail, and explains complex subject matter in simple, conversational language. More than 400 of his articles are posted on this site.
