Rating: - Revealing stuff about Gleason
Well knowing about his success and looking at this video is quite ironic as Gleason is portrayed to be an unlucky comic with several years of failure before hitting it big. Guys like Steve Allen said he wasn't a great standup comic. Harry Smith who narrates comes up with a variety of excuses to cover up Gleason's failure.

Don't get me wrong while I found the man to be funny, I find the term comedy legend to be overrated here. Legends and Icons certainly display a genius even at the beginning of their career and Gleason struggled right up to the 50's (he was born near the 1920's) to get noticed.

He had his chances though landing roles in several Hollywood movies but
he just didn't quite have the part, nor the talent to really carry over.

I did find it ironic that for a guy who didn't want to be like his dad was by all intentional purposes a bad father and husband to his first wife. He selfishly pursued a rise to the top while ignoring his family kind of following in his Dad's footsteps as his own father left him.

Eventually though as with a lot of these A&E Biographies they put a positive spin on everything but this definitely gave me a new opinion of Gleason.

Anyways, if you are fan of Gleason you're sure to love it anyways, it has many rare clips of him on his rise to the top.

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