Today, I’m sharing with you the latest in a series of short stories I’m writing called Reruns, imagined biographies of beloved TV characters. I originally debuted this series on the delightful blog Anna In Austin. At that site, I have already published the secret backstories (and after-stories, if you will) of Lt. Columbo, Kojak, Mel from Alice, Col. Potter from M*A*S*H, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and even Pete, from SNL’s Olympia Restaurant sketches (AKA Cheeborgah, Cheeborgah). I also ran a short piece explaining why I’m writing these in the first place. If you’re interested, and I hope you are, please peruse the lot. And now for today’s entry, Ed Norton.
ED NORTON
Art Carney on “The Honeymooners”, DuMont Network, 1955.
To look at Edward Lilywhite Norton and see only one facet of the man, one of the sides he presented, was to fail utterly to see him. Unfortunately, that’s what his best friend in the world did for decades. Kramden, the fat blowhard, the yin to his freewheeling yang, would always write him off as “a mental case”, and that was as far as that narrow-minded bastard was going to pursue the matter. Yes, Norton was a nonconformist, an eccentric, a grown man who loved the kiddie show Captain Video, but imagine him living now, rather than the Fifties; in a world of grown men attending comic-book conventions, who would even notice? Ed Norton, however, lived when he lived, but then again, his times shaped him, the historical moments for his generation created him.
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