Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton on The Honeymooners, has died. She was 99. Her son, Randy, told TMZ that the actress died Saturday of natural causes and was in hospice care at the time of her death. Randolph was the last-surviving member of the Honeymooners cast, the classic CBS sitcom that starred Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, and Art Carney as friends and neighbors. Between The Jackie Gleason Show and the stand-alone half-hour sitcom that aired its “Classic 39” episodes between 1955 and 1956, Randolph appeared in nearly 100 episodes of The Honeymooners by 1957.
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Randolph didn’t participate in the Honeymooners revivals that aired as part of Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine. When Gleason sporadically revived The Honeymooners with Carney, Meadows and Randolph opted not to return; Patricia Wilson and then Jane Kean succeeded Randolph as Trixie in the hour-long Honeymooners episodes. Randolph appeared alongside her co-stars as part of The Honeymooners Anniversary Celebration in 1985, a clip show special marking the 30th anniversary of the beloved sitcom, and The Honeymooners Anniversary Special, an hour-long special commemorating the show’s anniversary in 1990.
In 1994, Randolph told The New York Times she was typecast as Trixie Norton in a piece titled “Trixie and Alice Stuck in Endless TV Honeymoon.” “For years after that role, directors would say: ‘No, we can’t use her. She’s too well-known as Trixie,” Randolph said. She got her start in a Clorets commercial that won her a part on the Gleason-hosted Cavalcade of Stars,leading to her best-known role as Trixie on The Honeymooners.
Randolph’s later credits include a 1964 episode of the medical drama The Doctors and the Nurses and as a guest star on an episode of the ’90s sitcom Hi Honey, I’m Home. Her final credited appearance is in the 2000 Ernie Hudson dramedy film Everything’s Jake.
According to TMZ, Randolph’s son asks that donations be sent to the Entertainment Community Fund in her memory.
