Mistake in live drama

[Jeffhs]

There was one hilarious slip of the tongue in the dialogue of "The Honeymooners", which was filmed presumably before a live audience, using the DuMont "Electronicam" television film system and ran on CBS in the mid-1950s. Ralph Kramden was trying to figure out where he had goofed on his income tax return; while listing his deductions, he said to his friend Ed Norton (in paraphrase), "...the horse with the stomach in its clock -- er, the clock in its stomach", describing a prize he had won in a poker game, IIRC. Since the program was being filmed, no part of it could be redone if an error was made in the dialogue or in the acting itself. I have this episode on VHS (taped in the early '80s from a Cleveland TV station, WCLQ-TV (now WQHS) which has since affiliated with Univision) and I laugh out loud every time I hear it.

[Rinehart]

There was a nightmarish mistake in one of the Honeymooners episodes where Gleason for some reason thought the sketch was over and was in his dressing room taking his makeup off. Art Carney was alone on stage at the time, so there was nothing to do except fill the airtime until someone got Gleason back. Fortunately, and just by chance, there was an orange in the icebox, so Carney improvised a 90-second mime routine about peeling the orange, full of all sorts of weird hand gestures and facial expressions. The man was a genius.