They're called the Classic 39, the half hour versions of the now legendary TV show The Honeymooners. They have been rerun endlessly for decades, with no end in sight. (WPIX-TV in New York runs them 24 hours a day every New Year's Eve, in a kind of holiday tradition.)

And while they've dated somewhat (you could never threaten to hit Alice in this day and age) the show is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest TV sitcoms ever made, an entry that always lands in the Top 10 of the greatest television shows in history. 

Most of us have no memory of a time when these programs didn't exist. But in 1955, it was brand new and TV Guide did a review of Jackie Gleason's latest effort, after abandoning his traditional variety show for the half hour format. I recently came across the article from December of that year, and what's fascinating about it is that the author had no idea then of what this single season would become. Here's what it said:



Hard as it is to imagine today, this show was not a ratings hit in the single year it ran and The Great One quickly went back to his old variety program standby. Here was his reaction in Sept. 1956 to what was then perceived as a "failure:"