THE LAST MOVIE OF JACKIE GLEASON

Rumor has it that director Garry Marshall would not go ahead with the making of "Nothing in Common" (1986) without the inclusion of Jackie Gleason. In poor health, Gleason had grown tired of filmmaking, and wished to retire from the business. After several attempts to get him on board, Marshall finally called Gleason on the phone and insisted that if he didn't do this film, that the last film he would be remembered for was the box-office bomb "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3" (1983). Gleason immediately accepted the offer on the condition that this would be his last acting role. In Marshall's 2012 memoir, "My Happy Days in Hollywood," he credits Ray Stark with asking Gleason the question about if he wanted "Smokey and the Bandit 3" being how he would be remembered.

Marshall described this picture as a humorous, poignant "exploration of how much we owe our parents.'' It is also, he agreed, a natural progression from his prior comedy, "The Flamingo Kid" (1984). That film starred Matt Dillon as a cabana boy at a 1960's beach club, awed by a flashy, flamboyant car dealer, played by Richard Crenna, at the expense of his lower-middle-class father, played by Hector Elizondo. "'The Flamingo Kid' was set in an age of comparative innocence, when notions of thrift, hard work and a good education were challenged by the values of the get-rich-quick society," said Marshall. "There's been a lot of upward mobility in the time between the stories. The family relationship in 'Nothing in Common' is more complex. It's much more of a dramatic comedy."

In a 2006 DGA interview, Marshall spoke about how an observation from Gleason in a key scene resulted in a turning point in both his and Tom Hanks' careers: "We had a hospital scene. Now Tom is a comic guy and Jackie Gleason is comical, and I come from comedy, so it was a very serious scene. So we weren't getting it and finally Jackie Gleason said, 'You know what's wrong? We're all doing hospital room jokes,' so he says, 'We must have an exorcism and free this room of all humor.' So the three of us like idiots ran around doing every bedpan, nurse, hospital joke ever done in the history of comedy and finally Jackie says, 'It's gone. It's all gone. Now we can do the serious scene.' So, now another director would say, 'Are they crazy? I knew exactly what he was saying.' And we did it and it's the one scene where Tom Hanks actually cries in the scene. Something he's never done before that, he was doing 'Bachelor Party' (1984) in his underwear, and this was a very important picture to Tom and to me because we both did a film that was a little more serious and a little more poignant and it got us into another category."

Gleason was seriously ill with colon cancer, liver cancer, thromboses hemorrhoids, diabetes and phlebitis throughout production. One evening during filming, he admitted to his daughter that he only had a short time to live. He died nearly one year after the film's release, long enough to personally view the completed film which he was said to have enjoyed very much....