title: Huawei

text: The corporation was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former officer in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Initially focused on manufacturing phone switches, Huawei has expanded its business to include building telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has deployed its products and services in more than 170 countries and areas. It overtook Ericsson in 2012 as the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, and overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung Electronics. In 2018, Huawei reported annual revenue of US$108.5 billion. In July 2020, Huawei surpassed Samsung and Apple in the number of phones shipped worldwide for the first time. This was primarily due to a drop in Samsung's global sales in the second quarter of 2020, owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Huawei

text: Although successful internationally, Huawei has faced difficulties in some markets, arising from undue state support, links to the PLA and Ministry of State Security (MSS), and concerns that Huawei's infrastructure equipment may enable surveillance by the Chinese government. With the development of 5G wireless networks, there have been calls from the U.S. and its allies to not do any kind of business with Huawei or other Chinese telecommunications companies such as ZTE. Huawei has argued that its products posed "no greater cybersecurity risk" than those of any other vendor, that the US has not shown evidence of espionage, and that the allegations are hypocritical as the American government itself conducts state survelliance programmes. However, experts point out that the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law and 2017 National Intelligence Law of the People's Republic of China are far-reaching legislation that compels Huawei and other companies to cooperate in gathering intelligence. According to former staff "it is no secret that employees often work with intelligence officials embedded in the company", with 25,000 Huawei employees previously serving in the MSS or the PLA, including former chairwoman Sun Yafang. Intelligence agencies have also implicated Huawei in several hacks of telecom networks, while several rival telecom manufacturers like Nortel and Cisco Systems have traced industrial espionage back to Huawei.


title: Huawei

text: Despite claims that it operates as a private company, questions regarding Huawei's ownership and control persist. Huawei is considered a national champion in China's "techno-nationalist development strategies", and has received extensive support including financing from state-owned banks, plus China has engaged in diplomatic lobbying and threatened trade reprisals against countries who considered blocking Huawei's participation from 5G. Huawei has assisted in the surveillance and mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang internment camps, resulting in sanctions by the United States Department of State. Huawei also tested a facial recognition AI that recognizes ethnicity-specific features to alert government authorities of members of an ethnic group.


title: Huawei

text: In the midst of an ongoing trade war between China and the United States, Huawei was restricted from doing commerce with U.S. companies due to alleged previous willful violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. On 29 June 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump reached an agreement to resume trade talks with China and announced that he would ease the aforementioned sanctions on Huawei. Huawei cut 600 jobs at its Santa Clara research center in June, and in December 2019 founder Ren Zhengfei said it was moving the center to Canada because the restrictions would block them from interacting with US employees. In 2020, Huawei agreed to sell the Honor brand to a state-owned enterprise of the Shenzhen municipal government to "ensure its survival", after the U.S. sanctions against them. In November 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned sales or import of equipment made by Huawei for national security reasons.


title: Huawei

text: According to the company founder Ren Zhengfei, the name "Huawei" comes from a slogan he saw on a wall, "Zhonghua youwei" meaning "China has promise" (), when he was starting up the company and needed a name. "Zhonghua" or "Hua" means China, while "youwei" means "promising/to show promise". "Huawei" has also been translated as "splendid achievement" or "China is able", which are possible readings of the name. In Chinese pinyin, the name is "Huáwéi", and pronounced in Mandarin Chinese; in Cantonese, the name is transliterated with Jyutping as "Waa-wai" and pronounced . However, pronunciation of "Huawei" by non-Chinese varies in other countries, for example "Hoe-ah-wei" in Belgium and the Netherlands. The company had considered changing the name in English out of concern that non-Chinese people may find it hard to pronounce, but decided to keep the name, and launched a name recognition campaign instead to encourage a pronunciation closer to "Wah-Way" using the words "Wow Way".


title: Huawei

text: During the 1980s, the Chinese government tried to modernize the country's underdeveloped telecommunications infrastructure. A core component of the telecommunications network was telephone exchange switches, and in the late 1980s, several Chinese research groups endeavoured to acquire and develop the technology, usually through joint ventures with foreign companies.


title: Huawei

text: Ren Zhengfei, a former deputy director of the People's Liberation Army engineering corps, founded Huawei in 1987 in Shenzhen. The company reports that it had RMB 21,000 (about $5,000 at the time) in registered capital from Ren Zhengfei and five other investors at the time of its founding where each contributed RMB 3,500. These five initial investors gradually withdrew their investments in Huawei. "The Wall Street Journal" has suggested, however, that Huawei received approximately "$46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts" since the Chinese government had a vested interest in fostering a company to compete against Apple and Samsung.


title: Huawei

text: Ren sought to reverse engineer and steal foreign technologies with local researchers. It is notable that China has borrowed liberally from Qualcomm and other industry leaders (PBX as an example) in order to enter the market. At a time when all of China's telecommunications technology was imported from abroad, Ren hoped to build a domestic Chinese telecommunication company that could compete with, and ultimately replace, foreign competitors.


title: Huawei

text: During its first several years the company's business model consisted mainly of reselling private branch exchange (PBX) switches imported from Hong Kong. Meanwhile, it was reverse-engineering imported switches and investing heavily in research and development to manufacture its own technologies. By 1990 the company had approximately 600 R&D staff and began its own independent commercialization of PBX switches targeting hotels and small enterprises.


title: Huawei

text: The company's first major breakthrough came in 1993 when it launched its C&C08 program controlled telephone switch. It was by far the most powerful switch available in China at the time. By initially deploying in small cities and rural areas and placing emphasis on service and customizability, the company gained market share and made its way into the mainstream market.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei also won a key contract to build the first national telecommunications network for the People's Liberation Army, a deal one employee described as "small in terms of our overall business, but large in terms of our relationships". In 1994, founder Ren Zhengfei had a meeting with Party general secretary Jiang Zemin, telling him that "switching equipment technology was related to national security, and that a nation that did not have its own switching equipment was like one that lacked its own military." Jiang reportedly agreed with this assessment.


title: Huawei

text: In the 1990s, Canadian telecom giant Nortel outsourced production of their entire product line to Huawei. They subsequently outsourced much of their product engineering to Huawei as well.


title: Huawei

text: Another major turning point for the company came in 1996 when the government in Beijing adopted an explicit policy of supporting domestic telecommunications manufacturers and restricting access to foreign competitors. Huawei was promoted by both the government and the military as a national champion, and established new research and development offices.


title: Huawei

text: Beginning in the late 1990s, Huawei built communications networks throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. It is the most important Chinese telecommunications company operating in these regions.


title: Huawei

text: In 1997, Huawei won a contract to provide fixed-line network products to Hong Kong company Hutchison Whampoa. Later that year, Huawei launched wireless GSM-based products and eventually expanded to offer CDMA and UMTS. In 1999, the company opened a research and development (R&D) centre in Bengaluru, India to develop a wide range of telecom software.


title: Huawei

text: In May 2003, Huawei partnered with 3Com on a joint venture known as H3C, which was focused on enterprise networking equipment. It marked 3Com's re-entrance into the high-end core routers and switch market, after having abandoned it in 2000 to focus on other businesses. 3Com bought out Huawei's share of the venture in 2006 for US$882 million.


title: Huawei

text: In 2004, Huawei signed a $10 billion credit line with China Development Bank to provide low-cost financing to customers buying its telecommunications equipment to support its sales outside of China. This line of credit was tripled to $30 billion in 2009.


title: Huawei

text: In 2005, Huawei's foreign contract orders exceeded its domestic sales for the first time. Huawei signed a global framework agreement with Vodafone. This agreement marked the first time a telecommunications equipment supplier from China had received Approved Supplier status from Vodafone Global Supply Chain. Huawei also signed a contract with British Telecom to deploy its multi-service access network (MSAN) and the transmission equipment for its 21st Century Network (21CN).


title: Huawei

text: In 2007, Huawei began a joint venture with U.S. security software vendor Symantec Corporation, known as Huawei Symantec, which aimed to provide end-to-end solutions for network data storage and security. Huawei bought out Symantec's share in the venture in 2012, with "The New York Times" noting that Symantec had fears that the partnership "would prevent it from obtaining United States government classified information about cyber threats".


title: Huawei

text: In May 2008, Australian carrier Optus announced that it would establish a technology research facility with Huawei in Sydney. In October 2008, Huawei reached an agreement to contribute to a new GSM-based HSPA+ network being deployed jointly by Canadian carriers Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility, joined by Nokia Siemens Networks. In November 2020, Telus dropped the plan to build 5G network with Huawei. Huawei delivered one of the world's first LTE/EPC commercial networks for TeliaSonera in Oslo, Norway in 2009. Norway-based telecommunications Telenor instead selected Ericsson due to security concerns with Huawei.


title: Huawei

text: In July 2010, Huawei was included in the Global Fortune 500 2010 list published by the U.S. magazine "Fortune" for the first time, on the strength of annual sales of US$21.8 billion and net profit of US$2.67 billion.


title: Huawei

text: In October 2012, it was announced that Huawei would move its UK headquarters to Green Park, Reading, Berkshire.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei also has expanding operations in Ireland since 2016. As well as a headquarters in Dublin, it has facilities in Cork and Westmeath.


title: Huawei

text: In September 2017, Huawei created a Narrowband IoT city-aware network using a "one network, one platform, N applications" construction model utilizing 'Internet of things' (IoT), cloud computing, big data, and other next-generation information and communications technology, it also aims to be one of the world's five largest cloud players in the near future.


title: Huawei

text: In April 2019, Huawei established the Huawei Malaysia Global Training Centre (MGTC) at Cyberjaya, Malaysia.


title: Huawei

text: By 2018, Huawei had sold 200 million smartphones. They reported that strong consumer demand for premium range smart phones helped the company reach consumer sales in excess of $52 billion in 2018.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei announced worldwide revenues of $105.1 billion for 2018, with a net profit of $8.7 billion. Huawei's Q1 2019 revenues were up 39% year-over-year, at US$26.76 billion.


title: Huawei

text: By the second quarter of 2020, Huawei had become the world's top smartphone seller, overtaking Samsung for the first time.


title: Huawei

text: In 2021, Huawei was ranked the second-largest R&D investor in the world by the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) in its EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard and ranked fifth in the world in US patents according to a report by Fairview Research's IFI Claims Patent Services.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei classifies itself as a "collective" entity and prior to 2019 did not refer to itself as a private company. Richard McGregor, author of "", said that this is "a definitional distinction that has been essential to the company's receipt of state support at crucial points in its development". McGregor argued that "Huawei's status as a genuine collective is doubtful." Huawei's position has shifted in 2019 when, Dr. Song Liuping, Huawei's chief legal officer, commented on the US government ban, said: "Politicians in the US are using the strength of an entire nation to come after "a private company"." (emphasis added).


title: Huawei

text: Ren Zhengfei is the founder and CEO of Huawei and has the power to veto any decisions made by the board of directors.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei disclosed its list of board of directors for the first time in 2010. Liang Hua is the current chair of the board. , the members of the board are Liang Hua, Guo Ping, Xu Zhijun, Hu Houkun, Meng Wanzhou (CFO and deputy chairwoman), Ding Yun, Yu Chengdong, Wang Tao, Xu Wenwei, Shen-Han Chiu, Chen Lifang, Peng Zhongyang, He Tingbo, Li Yingtao, Ren Zhengfei, Yao Fuhai, Tao Jingwen, and Yan Lida.


title: Huawei

text: Guo Ping is the Chairman of Huawei Device, Huawei's mobile phone division. Huawei's Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer is Zhou Daiqi who is also Huawei's Communist Party Committee Secretary. Their Chief legal officer is Song Liuping.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei claims it is an employee-owned company, but it remains a point of dispute. Ren Zhengfei retains approximately 1 percent of the shares of Huawei's holding company, Huawei Investment & Holding, with the remainder of the shares held by a trade union "committee" (not a trade union per se, and the internal governance procedures of this committee, its members, its leaders or how they are selected all remain undisclosed to the public) that is claimed to be representative of Huawei's employee shareholders. The company's trade union committee is registered with and pay dues to the Shenzhen federation of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. This is also due to a limitation in Chinese law preventing limited liability companies from having more than 50 shareholders. About half of Huawei staff participate in this scheme (foreign employees are not eligible), and hold what the company calls "virtual restricted shares". These shares are non-tradable and are allocated to reward performance. When employees leave Huawei, their shares revert to the company, which compensates them for their holding. Although employee shareholders receive dividends, their shares do not entitle them to any direct influence in management decisions, but enables them to vote for members of the 115-person Representatives' Commission from a pre-selected list of candidates. The Representatives' Commission selects Huawei Holding's board of directors and Board of Supervisors.


title: Huawei

text: Christopher Balding of Fulbright University and Donald C. Clarke of George Washington University have described Huawei's virtual stock program as “purely a profit-sharing incentive scheme” that “has nothing to do with financing or control” They found that, after a few stages of historical morphing, employees do not own a part of Huawei through their shares. Instead, the "virtual stock is a contract right, not a property right; it gives the holder no voting power in either Huawei Tech or Huawei Holding, cannot be transferred, and is cancelled when the employee leaves the firm, subject to a redemption payment from Huawei Holding TUC at a low fixed price". The same scholars added, "given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned."


title: Huawei

text: In 2021, it was reported that Huawei did not report its ultimate beneficial ownership in Europe as required by European anti-money laundering laws.


title: Huawei

text: In July 2021, Huawei reportedly hired Tony Podesta as a consultant and lobbyist, with a goal of nurturing the company's relationship with the Biden administration.


title: Huawei

text: In 2016, German camera company Leica has established a partnership with Huawei, and Leica cameras will be co-engineered into Huawei smartphones, including the P and Mate Series. The first smartphone to be co-engineered with a Leica camera was the Huawei P9.


title: Huawei

text: In August 2019, Huawei collaborated with eyewear company Gentle Monster and released smartglasses. In November 2019, Huawei partners with Devialet and unveiled a new specifically designed speaker, the Sound X. In October 2020, Huawei released its own mapping service, Petal Maps, which was developed in partnership with Dutch navigation device manufacturer TomTom.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei announced its Enterprise business in January 2011 to provide network infrastructure, fixed and wireless communication, data center, and cloud computing for global telecommunications customers.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei offers mobile and fixed softswitches, plus next-generation home location register and Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystems (IMS). Huawei sells xDSL, passive optical network (PON) and next-generation PON (NG PON) on a single platform. The company also offers mobile infrastructure, broadband access and service provider routers and switches (SPRS). Huawei's software products include service delivery platforms (SDPs), base station subsystems, and more.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei Global Services provides telecommunications operators with equipment to build and operate networks as well as consulting and engineering services to improve operational efficiencies. These include network integration services such as those for mobile and fixed networks; assurance services such as network safety; and learning services, such as competency consulting.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei's Devices division provides white-label products to content-service providers, including USB modems, wireless modems and wireless routers for mobile Wi-Fi, embedded modules, fixed wireless terminals, wireless gateways, set-top boxes, mobile handsets and video products. Huawei also produces and sells a variety of devices under its own name, such as the IDEOS smartphones, tablet PCs and Huawei Smartwatch.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei is the second-biggest smartphone maker in the world, after Samsung, as of the first quarter of 2019.


title: Huawei

text: Their current portfolio of phones has two high-end smartphone lines, the Huawei Mate series and Huawei P series. Under the company's current hardware release cadence, P series phones are typically directed towards mainstream consumers as the company's flagship smartphones, refining and expanding upon technologies introduced in Mate series devices (which are typically positioned towards early adopters).


title: Huawei

text: Cheaper handsets fall under its Honor brand. Honor was created in order to elevate Huawei-branded phones as premium offerings. In 2020, Huawei agreed to sell the Honor brand to a state-owned enterprise of the Shenzhen municipal government. Consequently Honor was cut off from access to Huawei’s IPs, which consists of more than 100,000 active patents by the end of 2020, and additionally cannot tap into Huawei's large R&D resources where $20 billion had been committed for 2021. However "Wired" magazine noted in 2021 that Honor devices still had not differentiated their software much from Huawei phones and that core apps and certain engineering features, like the Honor-engineered camera features looked "virtually identical' across both phones.


title: Huawei

text: In July 2003, Huawei established their handset department and by 2004, Huawei shipped their first phone, the C300. The U626 was Huawei's first 3G phone in June 2005 and in 2006, Huawei launched the first Vodafone-branded 3G handset, the V710. The U8220 was Huawei's first Android smartphone and was unveiled in MWC 2009. At CES 2012, Huawei introduced the Ascend range starting with the Ascend P1 S. At MWC 2012, Huawei launched the Ascend D1. In September 2012, Huawei launched their first 4G ready phone, the Ascend P1 LTE. At CES 2013, Huawei launched the Ascend D2 and the Ascend Mate. At MWC 2013, the Ascend P2 was launched as the world's first LTE Cat4 smartphone. In June 2013, Huawei launched the Ascend P6 and in December 2013, Huawei introduced Honor as a subsidiary independent brand in China. At CES 2014, Huawei launched the Ascend Mate2 4G in 2014 and at MWC 2014, Huawei launched the MediaPad X1 tablet and Ascend G6 4G smartphone. Other launched in 2014 included the Ascend P7 in May 2014, the Ascend Mate7, the Ascend G7 and the Ascend P7 Sapphire Edition as China's first 4G smartphone with a sapphire screen.


title: Huawei

text: In January 2015, Huawei discontinued the "Ascend" brand for its flagship phones, and launched the new P series with the Huawei P8. Huawei also partnered with Google to build the Nexus 6P which was released in September 2015.


title: Huawei

text: In May 2018, Huawei stated that they will no longer allow unlocking the bootloader of their phones to allow installing third party system software or security updates after Huawei stops them.


title: Huawei

text: The current models in the P and Mate lines, the Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40 5G, Mate 40 Pro 5G, P40, P40 Pro, Mate 30, Mate 30 Pro, Mate 30 5G, Mate 30 Pro 5G, P30, P30 Pro, Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20 X were released in 2018 and 2019. The P30 lineup is the most recent to include Google-certified Android with Google Play.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei is currently the most well-known international corporation in China and a pioneer of the 5G mobile phone standard, which will be used globally in the next years.


title: Huawei

text: In 2016, Huawei entered the laptop markets with the release of its Huawei MateBook series of laptops. They have continued to release laptop models in this series into 2020 with their most recent models being the MateBook X Pro and Matebook 13 2020.


title: Huawei

text: The HUAWEI MatePad Pro, launched in November 2019. Huawei is number one in the Chinese tablet market and number two globally as of 4Q 2019.


title: Huawei

text: The Huawei Watch is an Android Wear-based smartwatch developed by Huawei. It was announced at 2015 Mobile World Congress on 1 March 2015, and was released at Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin on 2 September 2015. It is the first smartwatch produced by Huawei. Their latest watch, the Huawei Watch GT 2e, was launched in India in May, 2020.


title: Huawei

text: In December 2021, the AITO M5 was unveiled as the first vehicle to be developed in cooperation with Huawei. The model was developed mainly by Seres and is essentially a restyled Seres SF5 crossover. The model was sold under a new brand called AITO, which stands for “Adding Intelligence to Auto” and uses Huawei DriveONE and HarmonyOS, while the Seres SF5 used Huawei DriveONE and HiCar.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has also secured collaboration with other automakers including BAIC Motor, Changan Automobile and GAC Group.


title: Huawei

text: Emotion UI (EMUI) is a ROM/OS developed by Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and based on Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP). EMUI is pre-installed on most Huawei Smartphone devices and its subsidiaries the Honor series.


title: Huawei

text: On 9 August 2019, Huawei officially unveiled Harmony OS at its inaugural developers' conference HDC in Dongguan. Huawei described Harmony as a free, microkernel-based distributed operating system for various types of hardware, with faster inter-process communication than QNX or Google's "Fuchsia" microkernel, and real-time resource allocation. The ARK compiler can be used to port Android APK packages to the OS. Huawei stated that developers would be able to "flexibly" deploy Harmony OS software across various device categories; the company focused primarily on IoT devices, including "smart displays", wearable devices, and in-car entertainment systems, and did not explicitly position Harmony OS as a mobile OS.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is Huawei's solution to GMS (Google Mobile services), it was created to work over Android System, so Android applications can work over Huawei HMS Mobile phones, if those don't use Google Mobile Services. HMS is part of Huawei ecosystem which Huawei developed complete solutions for several scenarios. One of their major application is called Huawei AppGallery, which is Huawei app store created as a competitor to Google's Android Play Store. As of December, 2019 it was in version 4.0 and as of 16 January 2020 the company reports it has signed up 55,000 apps using its HMS Core software.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. was the world's largest telecom equipment maker in 2012 and China's largest telephone-network equipment maker. With 3,442 patents, Huawei became the world's No. 1 applicant for international patents in 2014. In 2019, Huawei had the second most patents granted by the European Patent Office. In 2021, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s annual World Intellectual Property Indicators report ranked Huawei's number of patent applications published under the PCT System as 1st in the world, with 5464 patent applications being published during 2020. This position is consistent with their previous ranking at 1st for 4411 PCT applications in 2019.


title: Huawei

text: The company has twenty one R&D institutes in countries including China, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, Colombia, Sweden, Ireland, India, Russia, Israel, and Turkey.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei is considering opening a new research and development (R&D) center in Russia (2019/2020), which would be the third in the country after the Moscow and St. Petersburg R&D centers. Huawei also announced plans (November 2018) to open an R&D center in the French city of Grenoble, which would be mainly focused on smartphone sensors and parallel computing software development. The new R&D team in Grenoble was expected to grow to 30 researchers by 2020, said the company. The company said that this new addition brought to five the number of its R&D teams in the country: two were located in Sophia Antipolis and Paris, researching image processing and design, while the other two existing teams were based at Huawei's facilities in Boulogne-Billancourt, working on algorithms and mobile and 5G standards. The technology giant also intended to open two new research centers in Zürich and Lausanne, Switzerland. Huawei at the time employed around 350 people in Switzerland.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei also funds research partnerships with universities such as the University of British Columbia, the University of Waterloo, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Guelph, and Université Laval.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has faced criticism for various aspects of its operations, largely involving allegations of its products containing backdoors for Chinese government espionage—consistent with domestic laws requiring Chinese citizens and companies to cooperate with state intelligence when warranted. Huawei executives have consistently denied these allegations, having stated that the company has never received any requests by the Chinese government to introduce backdoors in its equipment, would refuse to do so, and that Chinese law did not compel them to do so.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei employed a complex system of agreements with local state-owned telephone companies that seemed to include illicit payments to the local telecommunications bureau employees. During the late 1990s, the company created several joint ventures with their state-owned telecommunications company customers. By 1998, Huawei had signed agreements with municipal and provincial telephone bureaus to create Shanghai Huawei, Chengdu Huawei, Shenyang Huawei, Anhui Huawei, Sichuan Huawei, and other companies. The joint ventures were actually shell companies, and were a way to funnel money to local telecommunications employees so that Huawei could get deals to sell them equipment. In the case of Sichuan Huawei, for example, local partners could get 60–70 percent of their investment returned in the form of annual 'dividends'.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has claimed that it has no special relationship with the Chinese Communist government, like other domestic private companies. However observers have noted that the Chinese government has granted Huawei much more comprehensive support than other domestic companies facing troubles abroad, such as ByteDance, since Huawei is considered a national champion in the China's "techno-nationalist development strategies" for national security and commercial enterprises. For instance after Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada pending extradition to the United States for fraud charges, China immediately arrested Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in what was widely viewed as "hostage diplomacy". China has also imposed tariffs on Australian imports in 2020, in apparent retaliation for Huawei and ZTE being excluded from Australia's 5G network in 2018.


title: Huawei

text: In June 2020, when the U.K. mulled reversing an earlier decision to permit Huawei's participation in 5G, China threatened retaliation in other sectors like power generation and high-speed rail, so then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reassured the U.K. saying “the U.S. stands with our allies and partners against the Chinese Communist Party's coercive bullying tactics,” and "the U.S. stands ready to assist our friends in the U.K. with any needs they have, from building secure and reliable nuclear power plants to developing trusted 5G solutions that protect their citizens’ privacy". On 7 October 2020, the U.K. Parliament's Defence Committee released a report concluding that there was evidence of collusion between Huawei and Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party, based upon ownership model and government subsidies it has received. Huawei responded by saying "this report lacks credibility as it is built on opinion rather than fact".


title: Huawei

text: In November 2019, the Chinese ambassador to Denmark, in meetings with high-ranking Faroese politicians, directly linked Huawei's 5G expansion with Chinese trade, according to a sound recording obtained by Kringvarp Føroya. According to "Berlingske", the ambassador threatened with dropping a planned trade deal with the Faroe Islands, if the Faroese telecom company Føroya Tele did not let Huawei build the national 5G network. Huawei said they did not knоw about the meetings.


title: Huawei

text: "The" "Wall Street Journal" has suggested that Huawei received approximately "$46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts" since the Chinese government had a vested interest in fostering a company to compete against Apple and Samsung. In particular, China's state-owned banks such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China make loans to Huawei customers which substantially undercut competitors' financing with lower interest and cash in advance, with China Development Bank providing a credit line totaling US$30 billion between 2004 and 2009. In 2010, the European Commission launched an investigation into China's subsidies that distorted global markets and harmed European vendors, and Huawei offered the initial complainant US$56 million to withdraw the complaint in an attempt to shut down the investigation. Then-European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht found that Huawei leveraged state support to underbid competitors by up to 70 percent.


title: Huawei

text: Company founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said “we never participate in espionage and we do not allow any of our employees to do any act like that. And we absolutely never install backdoors. Even if we were required by Chinese law, we would firmly reject that”. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was quoted saying "the Chinese government did not and will not ask Chinese companies to spy on other countries, such kind of action is not consistent with the Chinese law and is not how China behaves.” Huawei has cited the opinion of Zhong Lun Law Firm, whose lawyers testified to the FCC that the National Intelligence Law doesn't apply to Huawei. The opinion of Zhong Lun lawyers, reviewed by British law firm Clifford Chance, has been distributed widely by Huawei as an “independent legal opinion”, although Clifford Chance added a disclaimer stated that “the material should not be construed as constituting a legal opinion on the application of PRC law”. Follow up reporting from "Wired" cast doubt on the findings of Zhong Lun, particularly because the Chinese "government doesn't limit itself to what the law explicitly allows" when it comes to national security. "All Chinese citizens and organisations are obliged to cooperate upon request with PRC intelligence operations—and also maintain the secrecy of such operations", as explicitly stipulated in Article 7 of the 2017 PRC national intelligence-gathering activities law.


title: Huawei

text: Experts have pointed out that “under [President] Xi's intensifying authoritarianism [since] Beijing promulgated a new national intelligence law" in 2017, as well as the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law, both of which are vaguely defined and far-reaching. The two laws "[compel] Chinese businesses to work with Chinese intelligence and security agencies whenever they are requested to do so”, suggesting that Huawei or other domestic major technology companies could not refuse to cooperate with Chinese intelligence. One former Huawei employee said “The state wants to use Huawei, and it can use it if it wants. Everyone has to listen to the state. Every person. Every company and every individual, and you can't talk about it. You can't say you don't like it. That's just China.” The new cybersecurity law also requires domestic companies, and eventually foreign subsidiaries, to use state-certified network equipment and software so that their data and communications are fully visible to China's Cybersecurity Bureau. University of Nottingham's Martin Thorley has suggested that Huawei would have no recourse to oppose the Communist Party's request in court, since the Party controls the police, the media, the judiciary and the government. Klon Kitchen has suggested that 5G dominance is essential to China in order to achieve its vision where "the prosperity of state-run capitalism is combined with the stability and security of technologically enabled authoritarianism".


title: Huawei

text: Henry Jackson Society researchers conducted an analysis of 25,000 Huawei employee CVs and found that some "worked as agents within China's Ministry of State Security; worked on joint projects with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA); were educated at China's leading military academy; and had been employed with a military unit linked to a cyber attack on U.S. corporations." One of the study researchers says this shows "a strong relationship between Huawei and all levels of the Chinese state, Chinese military and Chinese intelligence. This to me appears to be a systemized, structural relationship." Charles Parton, a British diplomat, said this “give the lie to Huawei's claim that there is no evidence that they help the Chinese intelligence services. This gun is smoking.” In addition, senior security officials in Uganda and Zambia admitted that Huawei played key roles enabling their governments to spy on political opponents.


title: Huawei

text: Bloomberg revealed that Australian intelligence in 2012 had detected a hack, caused by a software update from Huawei on a telecom network. The update contained malicious code that operated like a “digital wiretap” that transmitted data to China before deleting itself. Investigators nonetheless managed to reconstruct the hack, and upon tracing it to Huawei technicians have determined that this attack was perpetrated by China's spy agency, then sharing the findings with the United States who also confirmed similar hacks. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused this of being a "slander". Inside the African Union headquarters, whose computer systems were supplied by Huawei and paid for by the Chinese government, IT staff discovered that data transfers on its servers peaked after hours from January 2012 to January 2017, with the African Union's internal data sent to unknown servers hosted in Shanghai. In May 2019, a Huawei Mediapad M5 belonging to a Canadian IT engineer living in Taiwan was found to be sending data to servers in China despite never being authorized to do so, as the apps could not be disabled and continued to send sensitive data even after appearing to be deleted. At the end of 2019, United States officials disclosed to the United Kingdom and Germany that Huawei has had the ability to covertly exploit backdoors intended for law enforcement officials since 2009, as these backdoors are found on carrier equipment like antennas and routers, and Huawei's equipment is widely used around the world due to its low cost.


title: Huawei

text: A 2012 White House-ordered security review found no evidence that Huawei spied for China and said instead that security vulnerabilities on its products posed a greater threat to its users. The details of the leaked review came a week after a US House Intelligence Committee report which warned against letting Huawei supply critical telecommunications infrastructure in the United States.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has been at the center of espionage allegations over Chinese 5G network equipment. In 2018, the United States passed a defense funding bill that contained a passage barring the federal government from doing business with Huawei, ZTE, and several Chinese vendors of surveillance products, due to security concerns. The Chinese government has threatened economic retaliation against countries that block Huawei's market access.


title: Huawei

text: Similarly in November 2018, New Zealand blocked Huawei from supplying mobile equipment to national telecommunications company Spark New Zealand's 5G network, citing a "significant network security risk" and concerns about China's National Intelligence Law.


title: Huawei

text: In 2019, a report commissioned by the Papua New Guinea (PNG) National Cyber Security Centre, funded by the Australian government, alleged that a data center built by Huawei for the PNG government contained exploitable security flaws. Huawei responded that the project "complies with appropriate industry standards and the requirements of the customer." The Government of Papua New Guinea has called the data centre a 'failed investment' and attempted to have the loan cancelled.


title: Huawei

text: Between December 2018 and January 2019, German and British intelligence agencies initially pushed back against the US' allegations, stating that after examining Huawei's 5G hardware and accompanying source code, they have found no evidence of malevolence and that a ban would therefore be unwarranted. Additionally, the head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (the information security arm of GCHQ) stated that the US has not managed to provide the UK with any proof of its allegations against Huawei and also their agency had concluded that any risks involving Huawei in UK's telecom networks are "manageable". The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC), set up in 2010 to assuage security fears as it examined Huawei hardware and software for the UK market, was staffed largely by employees from Huawei but with regular oversight from GCHQ, which led to questions of operating independence from Huawei. On 1 October 2020, an official report released by National Cyber Security Centre noted that "Huawei has failed to adequately tackle security flaws in equipment used in the UK's telecoms networks despite previous complaints", and flagged one vulnerability of "national significance" related to broadband in 2019. The report concluded that Huawei was not confident of implementing the five-year plan of improving its software engineering processes, so there was "limited assurance that all risks to UK national security" could be mitigated in the long-term. On 14 July 2020, the United Kingdom Government announced a ban on the use of company's 5G network equipment, citing security concerns. In October 2020, the British Defence Select Committee announced that it had found evidence of Huawei's collusion with the Chinese state and that it supported accelerated purging of Huawei equipment from Britain's telecom infrastructure by 2025, since they concluded that Huawei had "engaged in a variety of intelligence, security, and intellectual property activities" despite its repeated denials. In November 2020, Huawei challenged the UK government's decision, citing an Oxford Economics report that it had contributed £3.3 billion to the UK's GDP.


title: Huawei

text: In January 2020, Germany’s spy chief Huawei “can’t fully be trusted”, while Dutch newspaper "de Volkskrant" reported on a Huawei “backdoor” in the network of a major Netherlands telecom, leading to a probe by the AIVD on the possibility that the breach had enabled spying by the Chinese government. However France’s cybersecurity chief Guillaume Poupard shrugged off German's concerns and stated that his agency ANSSI haven't uncovered any evidence nor seen a "smoking gun" of Huawei spying in Europe. In an interview with Bloomberg news, Poupard said  “There is no situation with Huawei being caught massively spying in Europe. Elsewhere maybe it’s different, but not in Europe."


title: Huawei

text: In March 2019, Huawei filed three defamation claims over comments suggesting ties to the Chinese government made on television by a French researcher, a broadcast journalist and a telecommunications sector expert. In June 2020 ANSSI informed French telecommunications companies that they would not be allowed to renew licenses for 5G equipment made from Huawei after 2028. On 28 August 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron assured the Chinese government that it did not ban Huawei products from participating in its fifth-generation mobile roll-out, but favored European providers for security reasons. The head of the France's cybersecurity agency also stated that it has granted time-limited waivers on 5G for wireless operators that use Huawei products, a decision that likely started a "phasing out" of the company's products. Huawei has proposed new factories and research facilities to persuade countries to reconsider their bans on Huawei's participation in their respective 5G networks, however a spokesman for France's economy ministry confirmed that the new factory would not affect the decision to phase out use of Chinese equipment from France's telecoms.


title: Huawei

text: In February 2020, US government officials claimed that Huawei has had the ability to covertly exploit backdoors intended for law enforcement officials in carrier equipment like antennas and routers since 2009.


title: Huawei

text: In mid July 2020, Andrew Little, the Minister in charge of New Zealand's signals intelligence agency the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), announced that New Zealand would not join the United Kingdom and United States in banning Huawei from the country's 5G network.


title: Huawei

text: Following the 2020 China–India skirmishes, India announced that Huawei would be blocked from participating in the country's 5G network for national security reasons.


title: Huawei

text: In May 2022, Canada's industry minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced that Canada will ban Huawei from the country's 5G network, in an effort to protect the safety and security of Canadians, as well as to protect Canada's infrastructure. The Canadian federal government cited national security concerns for the move, saying that the suppliers could be forced to company with “extrajudicial directions from foreign governments” in ways that could “conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests”. Telcos will be prevented from procuring new 4G or 5G equipment from Huawei and ZTE and must remove all ZTE- and Huawei-branded 5G equipment from their networks by June 28, 2024.


title: Huawei

text: In December 2012, Reuters reported that "deep links" existed as early as 2010 between Huawei through Meng Wanzhou (who was then CFO of the firm) and an Iranian telecom importer named Skycom. The US had long-standing sanctions on Iran, including against the importation of US technology goods into Iran. On 22 August 2018, the Trump administration and a New York court, including staffers of Trump's cabinet officially issued an arrest warrant for Meng to stand trial in the United States. On 1 December 2018, Meng was arrested in Canada at the behest of the Trump administration. She faces extradition to the United States on charges of violating the sanctions regime.


title: Huawei

text: On 28 January 2019, the Trump administration's cabinet and federal prosecutors formally indicted Meng and Huawei with 13 counts of bank and wire fraud (in order to mask the sale that is illegal under sanctions of U.S. technology to Iran), obstruction of justice, and misappropriating trade secrets. The department also filed a formal extradition request for Meng with Canadian authorities that same day. Huawei responded to the charges and said that it "denies that it or its subsidiary or affiliate have committed any of the asserted violations", as well as asserted Meng was similarly innocent. The China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology believed the charges brought on by the United States were "unfair".


title: Huawei

text: The case for extradition of Meng to the US to face charges is ongoing as of May, 2020 with the B.C. Supreme Court judge on 27 May 2020 ruling that extradition proceedings against the Huawei executive should proceed, denying the claim of double criminality brought by Meng's defense team. On September 24, 2021, the Department of Justice announced it had suspended its charges against Meng Wanzhou after she entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with them in which she conceded she helped misrepresent the relationship between Huawei and its subsidiary Skycom to HSBC in order to transact business with Iran, but did not have to plead guilty to the fraud charges. The Department of Justice will move to withdraw all the charges against Meng when the deferral period ends on December 21, 2022, on the condition that she is not charged with a crime before then.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has been accused of various instances of intellectual property theft against parties such as Nortel, Cisco Systems, and T-Mobile US (where a Huawei employee had photographed a robotic arm used to stress-test smartphones and taken a fingertip from the robot). The management of the company claims the US government persecutes it because Huawei's expansion can affect American business interests. In August 2018, a Texas court found that Huawei had infringed on patents held by the American firm PanOptis. Huawei later settled the case. In November 2018, a German court ruled against Huawei and ZTE in a patent infringement case. In February 2020, the United States Department of Justice charged Huawei with racketeering and conspiring to steal trade secrets from six U.S. firms.


title: Huawei

text: Nortel's chief security officer Brian Shields discovered then-Nortel CEO Mike S. Zafirovski's computer and company profile were compromised by hackers working for the Chinese government, likely on behalf of Huawei. This suspected industrial espionage allowed Huawei to quickly advance its product development.


title: Huawei

text: In 2019, Huawei's chief legal officer stated "In the past 30 years, no court has ever concluded that Huawei engaged in malicious IP theft...no company can become a global leader by stealing from others."


title: Huawei

text: Documents leaked in 2019 revealed that Huawei "secretly helped the North Korean government build and maintain the country's commercial wireless network," possibly in violation of international sanctions.


title: Huawei

text: Huawei has assisted in the surveillance and mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang internment camps, resulting in sanctions by the United States Department of State. Huawei also tested a facial recognition AI that recognizes ethnicity-specific features to alert government authorities of members of an ethnic group. In January 2021, it was reported that Huawei previously filed a patent with the China National Intellectual Property Administration for a technology to identify Uyghur pedestrians.


title: Huawei

text: In 2019, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank often described as hawkish in Australian media, accused Huawei of assisting in the mass detention of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang internment camps. Huawei technology used by the Xinjiang internal security forces for data analysis, and companies supplying Huawei operating in the Xinjiang region are accused of using forced labour. However, Huawei denied these reports.


title: Huawei

text: In August 2018, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (NDAA 2019) was signed into law, containing a provision that banned Huawei and ZTE equipment from being used by the U.S. federal government, citing security concerns. Huawei filed a lawsuit over the act in March 2019, alleging it to be unconstitutional because it specifically targeted Huawei without granting it a chance to provide a rebuttal or due process.


title: Huawei

text: Additionally, on 15 May 2019, the Department of Commerce added Huawei and 70 foreign subsidiaries and "affiliates" to its Entity List under the Export Administration Regulations, citing the company having been indicted for "knowingly and willfully causing the export, re-export, sale and supply, directly and indirectly, of goods, technology and services (banking and other financial services) from the United States to Iran and the government of Iran without obtaining a license from the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)". This restricts U.S. companies from doing business with Huawei without a government license. Various U.S.-based companies immediately froze their business with Huawei to comply with the regulation.


title: Huawei

text: The May 2019 ban on Huawei was partial: it did not affect most non-American produced chips, and the Trump administration granted a series of extensions on the ban in any case, with another 90-day reprieve issued in May 2020. In May 2020, the U.S. extended the ban to cover semiconductors customized for Huawei and made with U.S. technology. In August 2020, the U.S. again extended the ban to a blanket ban on all semiconductor sales to Huawei. The blanket ban took effect in September 2020.


title: Huawei

text: These actions have negatively affected Huawei production, sales and financial projections. However, on 29 June 2019 at the G20 summit, the US President made statements implicating plans to ease the restrictions on U.S. companies doing business with Huawei. Despite this statement, on 15 May 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce extended its export restrictions to bar Huawei from producing semiconductors derived from technology or software of U.S. origin, even if the manufacturing is performed overseas. In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Huawei a national security threat, thereby barring it from any U.S. subsidies. In July 2020, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council published a Federal Register notice prohibiting all federal government contractors from selling Huawei hardware to the federal government and preventing federal contractors from using Huawei hardware.


title: Huawei

text: In November 2020, Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting any American company or individual from owning shares in companies that the United States Department of Defense has listed as having links to the People's Liberation Army, which included Huawei. In January 2021, the Trump administration revoked licenses from US companies such as Intel from supplying products and technologies to Huawei. In June 2021, the FCC voted unanimously to prohibit approvals of Huawei gear in U.S. telecommunication networks on national security grounds.


title: Huawei

text: In June 2021, the administration of Joe Biden began to persuade the United Arab Emirates to remove the Huawei Technologies Co. equipment from its telecommunications network, while ensuring to further distance itself from China. It came as an added threat to the $23 billion arms deal of F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones between the US and the UAE. The Emirates got a deadline of four years from Washington to replace the Chinese network. A report in September 2021 analyzed how the UAE was struggling between maintaining its relations with both the United States and China. While Washington had a hawkish stance towards Beijing, the increasing Emirati relations with China have strained those with America. In that light, the Western nation has raised concerns for the UAE to beware of the security threat that the Chinese technologies like Huawei 5G telecommunications network possessed. However, the Gulf nations like the Emirates and Saudi Arabia defended their decision of picking Chinese technology over the American, saying that it is much cheaper and had no political conditions.


title: Huawei

text: On 18 November 2020, an opposition motion calling on the government for a decision on the participation of Huawei in Canada's 5G network and a plan on combating what it called "Chinese aggression" passed 179 to 146. The non-binding motion was supported by the NDP and Bloc Québécois. In May 2022, Canada's government banned Huawei and ZTE equipment from the country's 5G network, with companies having until 28 June 2024 to remove 5G equipment from these Chinese vendors. Christopher Parsons of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab stated that continued use of Huawei and ZTE equipment "would have given the Chinese government leverage over Canada".


title: Huawei

text: On November 25, 2022, the FCC issued a ban on Huawei for national security reasons, citing the national security risk posed by the technology owned by China.


title: Huawei

text: Before the 15 September 2020 deadline, Huawei was in "survival mode" and stockpiled "5G mobile processors, Wifi, radio frequency and display driver chips and other components" from key chip suppliers and manufacturers, including Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, MediaTek, Realtek, Novatek, and RichWave. Even in 2019, Huawei spent $23.45 billion on the stockpiling of chips and other supplies in 2019, up 73% from 2018.


title: Huawei

text: On its most crucial business, namely, its telecoms business (including 5G) and server business, Huawei has stockpiled 1.5 to 2 years' worth of chips and components. It began massively stockpiling from 2018, when Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei's founder, was arrested in Canada upon U.S. request. Key Huawei suppliers included Xilinx, Intel, AMD, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and Kioxia. On the other hand, analysts predicted that Huawei could ship 195 million units of smartphones from its existing stockpile in 2021, but shipments may drop to 50 million in 2021 if rules are not relaxed.


title: Huawei

text: In late 2020, it was reported that Huawei plans to build a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Shanghai that does not involve U.S. technology. The plan may help Huawei obtain necessary chips after its existing stockpile becomes depleted, which helps it chart a sustainable path for its telecoms business. Huawei plans to collaborate with the government-run Shanghai IC R&D Center, which is partially owned by the state-owned enterprise Huahong Group. Huawei may be purchasing equipment from Chinese firms such as AMEC and Naura, as well as using foreign tools which it can still find on the market.


title: Huawei

text: During the sanctions, it was noted that Huawei had been working on its own in-house operating system codenamed "HongMeng OS": in an interview with "Die Welt", executive Richard Yu stated that an in-house OS could be used as a "plan B" if it were prevented from using Android or Windows as the result of U.S. action. Huawei filed trademarks for the names "Ark", "Ark OS", and "Harmony" in Europe, which were speculated to be connected to this OS. On 9 August 2019, Huawei officially unveiled Harmony OS at its inaugural HDC developers' conference in Dongguan with the ARK compiler which can be used to port Android APK packages to the OS.


title: Huawei

text: In September 2019, Huawei began offering the Linux distribution Deepin as a pre-loaded operating system on selected Matebook models in China.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: John Herbert Gleason (February 26, 1916June 24, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, writer, composer, and conductor known affectionately as "The Great One." Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his city-bus-driver character Ralph Kramden in the television series "The Honeymooners". He also developed "The Jackie Gleason Show," which maintained high ratings from the mid 1950s through 1970. After originating in New York City, filming moved to Miami Beach, Florida, in 1964 after Gleason took up permanent residence there.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in 1961's "The Hustler" (co-starring with Paul Newman) and Buford T. Justice in the "Smokey and the Bandit" series from 1977 to 1983 (co-starring Burt Reynolds).


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career during the 1950s and 1960s, producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums. His first album, "Music for Lovers Only", still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each. His output spans some 20-plus singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and over 40 CDs.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason was born on February 26, 1916, at 364 Chauncey Street in the Stuyvesant Heights (now Bedford-Stuyvesant) section of Brooklyn. Named Herbert Walton Gleason Jr. at birth, he was baptized John Herbert Gleason and grew up at 328 Chauncey Street, Apartment 1A (an address he later used for Ralph and Alice Kramden on "The Honeymooners"). His parents were Herbert Walton "Herb" Gleason (1883–1939), born in New York City, and Mae Agnes "Maisie" (née Kelly; 1886–1935). Most sources indicate his mother was originally from Farranree, County Cork, Ireland. Gleason was the younger of two children; his elder brother, Clement, died of meningitis at age 14 in 1919.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason remembered Clement and his father having "beautiful handwriting". He used to watch his father work at the family's kitchen table, writing insurance policies in the evenings. On the night of December 14, 1925, Gleason's father disposed of any family photos in which he appeared; just after noon on December 15, he collected his hat, coat, and paycheck, and permanently left his family and job at the insurance company. Once it became evident that he was not coming back, Mae went to work as a subway attendant for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT).


title: Jackie Gleason

text: After his father abandoned the family, young Gleason began hanging around with a local gang, hustling pool. He attended P.S. 73 Elementary School in Brooklyn, John Adams High School in Queens, and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn. Gleason became interested in performing after being part of a class play; he quit school before graduating and got a job that paid $4per night () as master of ceremonies at a theater. Other jobs he held at that time included pool hall worker, stunt driver, and carnival barker. Gleason and his friends made the rounds of the local theaters; he put an act together with one of his friends, and the pair performed on amateur night at the Halsey Theater, where Gleason replaced his friend Sammy Birch as master of ceremonies. He performed the same duties twice a week at the Folly Theater.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason was 19 when his mother died in 1935 of sepsis from a large neck carbuncle that young Jackie had tried to lance. He had nowhere to go, and thirty-six cents to his name. The family of his first girlfriend, Julie Dennehy, offered to take him in; Gleason, however, was headstrong and insisted that he was going into the heart of the city. His friend Birch made room for him in the hotel room he shared with another comedian. Birch also told him of a week-long gig in Reading, Pennsylvania, which would pay $19—more money than Gleason could imagine (). The booking agent advanced his bus fare for the trip against his salary, granting Gleason his first job as a professional comedian. Following this, he would always have regular work in small clubs.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason worked his way up to a job at New York's Club 18, where insulting its patrons was the order of the day. Gleason greeted noted skater Sonja Henie by handing her an ice cube and saying, "Okay, now do something." It was here that Jack L. Warner first saw Gleason, signing him to a film contract for $250 a week.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: By age 24, Gleason was appearing in movies: first for Warner Brothers (as Jackie C. Gleason) in such films as "Navy Blues" (1941) with Ann Sheridan and Martha Raye and "All Through the Night" (1941) with Humphrey Bogart; then for Columbia Pictures for the B military comedy "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp"; and finally for Twentieth Century-Fox, where Gleason played Glenn Miller Orchestra bassist Ben Beck in "Orchestra Wives" (1942). He also had a small part as a soda shop clerk in "Larceny, Inc." (1942), with Edward G. Robinson and a modest part as an actor's agent in the 1942 Betty Grable–Harry James musical "Springtime in the Rockies".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: During World War II, Gleason was initially exempt from military service, since he was a father of two. However, in 1943 the US started drafting men with children. When Gleason reported to his induction, doctors discovered that his broken left arm had healed crooked (the area between his thumb and forefinger was nerveless and numb), that a pilonidal cyst existed at the end of his coccyx, and that he was 100 pounds overweight. Gleason was therefore classified 4-F and rejected for military service.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason did not make a strong impression on Hollywood at first; at the time, he developed a nightclub act that included comedy and music. At the end of 1942, Gleason and Lew Parker led a large cast of entertainers in the road show production of Olsen and Johnson's "New 1943 Hellzapoppin". He also became known for hosting all-night parties in his hotel suite; the hotel soundproofed his suite out of consideration for its other guests. "Anyone who knew Jackie Gleason in the 1940s", wrote CBS historian Robert Metz, "would tell you The Fat Man would never make it. His pals at Lindy's watched him spend money as fast as he soaked up the booze." Rodney Dangerfield wrote that he witnessed Gleason purchasing marijuana in the 1940s.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's first significant recognition as an entertainer came on Broadway when he appeared in the hit musical "Follow the Girls" (1944). While working in films in California, Gleason also worked at former boxer Maxie Rosenbloom's nightclub (Slapsy Maxie's, on Wilshire Boulevard).


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's big break occurred in 1949, when he landed the role of blunt but softhearted aircraft worker Chester A. Riley for the first television version of the radio comedy "The Life of Riley". (William Bendix had originated the role on radio but was initially unable to accept the television role because of film commitments.) Despite positive reviews, the show received modest ratings and was cancelled after one year. Bendix reprised the role in 1953 for a five-year series. "The Life of Riley" became a television hit for Bendix during the mid-to-late 1950s.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: But long before this, Gleason's nightclub act had received attention from New York City's inner circle and the fledgling DuMont Television Network. He was working at Slapsy Maxie's when he was hired to host DuMont's "Cavalcade of Stars" variety hour in 1950, having been recommended by comedy writer Harry Crane, whom he knew from his days as a stand-up comedian in New York. The program initially had rotating hosts; Gleason was first offered two weeks at $750 per week. When he responded it was not worth the train trip to New York, the offer was extended to four weeks. Gleason returned to New York for the show. He framed the acts with splashy dance numbers, developed sketch characters he would refine over the next decade, and became enough of a presence that CBS wooed him to its network in 1952.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Renamed "The Jackie Gleason Show", the program became the country's second-highest-rated television show during the 1954–55 season. Gleason amplified the show with even splashier opening dance numbers inspired by Busby Berkeley's screen dance routines and featuring the precision-choreographed June Taylor Dancers. Following the dance performance, he would do an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music" ("That's a Plenty", a Dixieland classic from 1914), he would shuffle toward the wings, clapping his hands and shouting, "And awaaay we go!" The phrase became one of his trademarks, along with "How sweet it is!" (which he used in reaction to almost anything). Theona Bryant, a former Powers Girl, became Gleason's "And awaaay we go" girl. Ray Bloch was Gleason's first music director, followed by Sammy Spear, who stayed with Gleason through the 1960s; Gleason often kidded both men during his opening monologues. He continued developing comic characters, including:


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In a 1985 interview, Gleason related some of his characters to his youth in Brooklyn. The Mr. Dennehy whom Joe the Bartender greets is a tribute to Gleason's first love, Julie Dennehy. The character of The Poor Soul was drawn from an assistant manager of an outdoor theater he frequented.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason disliked rehearsing. With a photographic memory he read the script once, watched a rehearsal with his co-stars and stand-in, and shot the show later that day. When he made mistakes, he often blamed the cue cards.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's most popular character by far was blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden. Largely drawn from Gleason's harsh Brooklyn childhood, these sketches became known as "The Honeymooners." The show was based on Ralph's many get-rich-quick schemes; his ambition; his antics with his best friend and neighbor, scatterbrained sewer worker Ed Norton; and clashes with his sensible wife, Alice, who typically pulled Ralph's head down from the clouds.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason developed catchphrases he used on "The Honeymooners", such as threats to Alice: "One of these days, Alice, pow! right in the kisser" and "Bang! Zoom! To the moon Alice, to the moon!"


title: Jackie Gleason

text: "The Honeymooners" originated from a sketch Gleason was developing with his show's writers. He said he had an idea he wanted to enlarge: a skit with a smart, quiet wife and her very vocal husband. He went on to describe that, while the couple had their fights, underneath it all they loved each other. Titles for the sketch were tossed around until someone came up with "The Honeymooners".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: "The Honeymooners" first was featured on "Cavalcade of Stars" on October 5, 1951, with Carney in a guest appearance as a cop (Norton did not appear until a few episodes later) and character actress Pert Kelton as Alice. Darker and fiercer than the milder later version with Audrey Meadows as Alice, the sketches proved popular with critics and viewers. As Kramden, Gleason played a frustrated bus driver with a battleaxe of a wife in harrowingly realistic arguments; when Meadows (who was 15 years younger than Kelton) took over the role after Kelton was blacklisted, the tone softened considerably.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: When Gleason moved to CBS, Kelton was left behind; her name had been published in "Red Channels", a book that listed and described reputed communists (and communist sympathizers) in television and radio, and the network did not want to hire her. Gleason reluctantly let her leave the cast, with a cover story for the media that she had "heart trouble". At first, he turned down Meadows as Kelton's replacement. Meadows wrote in her memoir that she slipped back to audition again and frumped herself up to convince Gleason that she could handle the role of a frustrated (but loving) working-class wife. Rounding out the cast, Joyce Randolph played Trixie, Ed Norton's wife. Elaine Stritch had played the role as a tall and attractive blonde in the first sketch but was quickly replaced by Randolph. Comedy writer Leonard Stern always felt "The Honeymooners" was more than sketch material and persuaded Gleason to make it into a full-hour-long episode.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1955, Gleason gambled on making it a separate series entirely. These are the "Classic 39" episodes, which finished 19th in the ratings for their only season. They were filmed with a new DuMont process, Electronicam. Like kinescopes, it preserved a live performance on film; unlike kinescopes (which were screenshots), the film was of higher quality and comparable to a motion picture. That turned out to be Gleason's most prescient move. A decade later, he aired the half-hour "Honeymooners" in syndicated reruns that began to build a loyal and growing audience, making the show a television icon. Its popularity was such that in 2000 a life-sized statue of Jackie Gleason, in uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, was installed outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason went back to the live format for 1956–57 with short and long versions, including hour-long musicals. These musical presentations were reprised ten years later, in color, with Sheila MacRae and Jane Keane as Alice and Trixie.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Audrey Meadows reappeared for one black-and-white remake of the '50s sketch "The Adoption", telecast January 8, 1966. Ten years later she rejoined Gleason and Carney (with Jane Kean replacing Joyce Randolph) for several TV specials (one special from 1973 was shelved).


title: Jackie Gleason

text: "The Jackie Gleason Show" ended in June 1957. In 1959, Jackie discussed the possibility of bringing back "The Honeymooners" in new episodes. His dream was partially realized with a Kramden-Norton sketch on a CBS variety show in late 1960 and two more sketches on his new hour-long CBS show "The American Scene Magazine" in 1962.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums with jazz overtones for Capitol Records. Gleason believed there was a ready market for romantic instrumentals. His goal was to make "musical wallpaper that should never be intrusive, but conducive". He recalled seeing Clark Gable play love scenes in movies; the romance was, in his words, "magnified a thousand percent" by background music. Gleason reasoned, "If "Gable" needs music, a guy in Brooklyn must be "desperate!""


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's first album, "Music for Lovers Only", still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each. At one point, Gleason held the record for charting the most number-one albums on the "Billboard" 200 without charting any hits on the Top 40 of the ""Billboard" Hot 100" singles chart.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason could not read or write music; he was said to have conceived melodies in his head and described them vocally to assistants who transcribed them into musical notes. These included the well-remembered themes of both "The Jackie Gleason Show" ("Melancholy Serenade") and "The Honeymooners" ("You're My Greatest Love"). In spite of period accounts establishing his direct involvement in musical production, varying opinions have appeared over the years as to how much credit Gleason should have received for the finished products. Biographer William A. Henry wrote in his 1992 book, "The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason", that beyond the possible conceptualizing of many of the song melodies, Gleason had no direct involvement (such as conducting) in making the recordings. Red Nichols, a jazz great who had fallen on hard times and led one of the group's recordings, was not paid as session-leader. Cornetist and trumpeter Bobby Hackett soloed on several of Gleason's albums and was leader for seven of them. Asked late in life by musician–journalist Harry Currie in Toronto what Gleason really did at the recording sessions, Hackett replied, "He brought the checks".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Jackie knows a lot more about music than people give him credit for. I have seen him conduct a 60-piece orchestra and detect one discordant note in the brass section. He would immediately stop the music and locate the wrong note. It always amazed the professional musicians how a guy who technically did not know one note from another could do that. And he was never wrong.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: The composer and arranger George Williams has been cited in various biographies as having served as ghostwriter for the majority of arrangements heard on many of Gleason's albums of the 1950s and 1960s. Williams was not given credit for his work until the early 1960s, albeit only in small print on the backs of album covers.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's lead role in the musical "Take Me Along" (1959–60) won him a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1956 Gleason revived his original variety hour (including "The Honeymooners"), winning a Peabody Award. He abandoned the show in 1957 when his ratings for the season came in at No. 29 and the network "suggested" he needed a break. He returned in 1958 with a half-hour show featuring Buddy Hackett, which did not catch on.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In addition to his salary and royalties, CBS paid for Gleason's Peekskill, New York, mansion "Round Rock Hill". Set on six acres, the architecturally noteworthy complex included a round main home, guest house, and storage building. It took Gleason two years to design the house, which was completed in 1959. Gleason sold the home when he relocated to Miami.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In October 1960, Gleason and Carney briefly returned, for a "Honeymooners" sketch, on a TV special. His next foray into television was the game show "You're in the Picture", which was cancelled after a disastrously received premiere episode but was followed the next week by a broadcast of Gleason's humorous half-hour apology, which was much better appreciated. For the rest of its scheduled run, the game show was replaced by a talk show named "The Jackie Gleason Show".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1962, Gleason resurrected his variety show with more splashiness and a new hook: a fictitious general-interest magazine called "The American Scene Magazine", through which Gleason trotted out his old characters in new scenarios, including two new Honeymooners sketches. He also added another catchphrase to the American vernacular, first uttered in the 1963 film "Papa's Delicate Condition": "How sweet it is!" "The Jackie Gleason Show: The American Scene Magazine" was a hit that continued for four seasons. Each show began with Gleason delivering a monologue and commenting on the attention-getting outfits of band leader Sammy Spear. Then the "magazine" features would be trotted out, from Hollywood gossip (reported by comedian Barbara Heller) to news flashes (played for laughs with a stock company of second bananas, chorus girls and dwarfs). Comedian Alice Ghostley occasionally appeared as a downtrodden tenement resident sitting on her front step and listening to boorish boyfriend Gleason for several minutes. After the boyfriend took his leave, the smitten Ghostley would exclaim, "I'm the luckiest girl in the world!" Veteran comics Johnny Morgan, Sid Fields, and Hank Ladd were occasionally seen opposite Gleason in comedy sketches. Helen Curtis played alongside him as a singer and actress, delighting audiences with her 'Madame Plumpadore' sketches with 'Reginald Van Gleason.'


title: Jackie Gleason

text: The final sketch was always set in Joe the Bartender's saloon with Joe singing "My Gal Sal" and greeting his regular customer, the unseen Mr. Dunahy (the TV audience, as Gleason spoke to the camera in this section). During the sketch, Joe would tell Dennehy about an article he had read in the fictitious "American Scene" magazine, holding a copy across the bar. It had two covers: one featured the New York skyline and the other palm trees (after the show moved to Florida). Joe would bring out Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim, who would regale Joe with the latest adventures of his neighborhood pals and sometimes show Joe his current "Top Cat" comic book. Joe usually asked Crazy to sing—almost always a sentimental ballad in his fine, lilting baritone.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason revived "The Honeymooners"—first with Sue Ane Langdon as Alice and Patricia Wilson as Trixie for two episodes of "The American Scene Magazine", then with Sheila MacRae as Alice and Jane Kean as Trixie for the 1966 series. By 1964 Gleason had moved the production from New York to Miami Beach, Florida, reportedly because he liked year-round access to the golf course at the nearby Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill (where he built his final home). His closing line became, almost invariably, "As always, the Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world!" In 1966, he abandoned the "American Scene Magazine" format and converted the show into a standard variety hour with guest performers.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason kicked off the 1966–1967 season with new, color episodes of "The Honeymooners". Carney returned as Ed Norton, with MacRae as Alice and Kean as Trixie. The sketches were remakes of the 1957 world-tour episodes, in which Kramden and Norton win a slogan contest and take their wives to international destinations. Each of the nine episodes was a full-scale musical comedy, with Gleason and company performing original songs by Lyn Duddy and Jerry Bresler. Occasionally Gleason would devote the show to musicals with a single theme, such as college comedy or political satire, with the stars abandoning their "Honeymooners" roles for different character roles. This was the show's format until its cancellation in 1970. (The exception was the 1968–1969 season, which had no hour-long "Honeymooners" episodes; that season, "The Honeymooners" was presented only in short sketches.) The musicals pushed Gleason back into the top five in ratings, but audiences soon began to decline. By its final season, Gleason's show was no longer in the top 25. In the last original "Honeymooners" episode aired on CBS ("Operation Protest" on February 28, 1970), Ralph encounters the youth-protest movement of the late 1960s, a sign of changing times in both television and society.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason (who had signed a deal in the 1950s that included a guaranteed $100,000 annual payment for 20 years, even if he never went on the air) wanted "The Honeymooners" to be just a portion of his format, but CBS wanted another season of only "The Honeymooners". The network had cancelled a mainstay variety show hosted by Red Skelton and would cancel "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1971 because they had become too expensive to produce and attracted, in the executives' opinion, too old an audience. Gleason simply stopped doing the show in 1970 and left CBS when his contract expired.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason did two "Jackie Gleason Show" specials for CBS after giving up his regular show in the 1970s, including "Honeymooners" segments and a Reginald Van Gleason III sketch in which the gregarious millionaire was portrayed as a comic drunk. When the CBS deal expired, Gleason signed with NBC. He later did a series of "Honeymooners" specials for ABC. Gleason hosted four ABC specials during the mid-1970s. Gleason and Carney also made a television movie, "Izzy and Moe" (1985), about an unusual pair of historic Federal prohibition agents in New York City who achieved an unbeatable arrest record with highly successful techniques including impersonations and humor, which aired on CBS in 1985.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In April 1974, Gleason revived several of his classic characters (including Ralph Kramden, Joe the Bartender and Reginald Van Gleason III) in a television special with Julie Andrews. In a song-and-dance routine, the two performed "Take Me Along" from Gleason's Broadway musical.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1985, three decades after the "Classic 39" began filming, Gleason revealed he had carefully preserved kinescopes of his live 1950s programs in a vault for future use (including "Honeymooners" sketches with Pert Kelton as Alice). These "lost episodes" (as they came to be called) were initially previewed at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, aired on the Showtime cable network in 1985, and later were added to the "Honeymooners" syndication package.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Some of them include earlier versions of plot lines later used in the 'classic 39' episodes. One (a Christmas episode duplicated several years later with Meadows as Alice) had all Gleason's best-known characters (Ralph Kramden, the Poor Soul, Rudy the Repairman, Reginald Van Gleason, Fenwick Babbitt and Joe the Bartender) featured in and outside of the Kramden apartment. The storyline involved a wild Christmas party hosted by Reginald Van Gleason up the block from the Kramdens' building at Joe the Bartender's place.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason did not restrict his acting to comedic roles. He had also earned acclaim for live television drama performances in "The Laugh Maker" (1953) on CBS's "Studio One" and William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life" (1958), which was produced as an episode of the anthology series "Playhouse 90".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of pool shark Minnesota Fats in "The Hustler" (1961), starring Paul Newman. Gleason made all his own trick pool shots. In his 1985 appearance on "The Tonight Show", Gleason told Johnny Carson that he had played pool frequently since childhood, and drew from those experiences in "The Hustler". He was extremely well-received as a beleaguered boxing manager in the movie version of Rod Serling's "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962). Gleason played a world-weary army sergeant in "Soldier in the Rain" (1963), in which he received top billing over Steve McQueen.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason wrote, produced and starred in "Gigot" (1962), in which he played a poor, mute janitor who befriended and rescued a prostitute and her small daughter. It was a box office flop. But the film's script was adapted and produced as the television film "The Wool Cap" (2004), starring William H. Macy in the role of the mute janitor; the television film received modestly good reviews.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason played the lead in the Otto Preminger-directed "Skidoo" (1968), considered an all-star failure. In 1969 William Friedkin wanted to cast Gleason as "Popeye" Doyle in "The French Connection" (1971), but because of the poor reception of "Gigot" and "Skidoo," the studio refused to offer Gleason the lead; he wanted it. Instead, Gleason wound up in "How to Commit Marriage" (1969) with Bob Hope, as well as the movie version of Woody Allen's play "Don't Drink the Water" (1969). Both were unsuccessful.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Eight years passed before Gleason had another hit film. This role was the cantankerous and cursing Texas sheriff Buford T. Justice in the films "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977), "Smokey and the Bandit II" (1980) and "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3" (1983). He co-starred with Burt Reynolds as the Bandit, Sally Field as Carrie (the Bandit's love interest), and Jerry Reed as Cledus "Snowman" Snow, the Bandit's truck-driving partner. Former NFL linebacker Mike Henry played his dimwitted son, Junior Justice. Gleason's gruff and frustrated demeanor and lines such as "I'm gonna barbecue yo' ass in molasses!" made the first "Bandit" movie a hit.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Years later, when interviewed by Larry King, Reynolds said he agreed to do the movie only if the studio hired Jackie Gleason to play the part of Sheriff Buford T. Justice (the name of a real Florida highway patrolman, who knew Reynolds' father). Reynolds said that director Hal Needham gave Gleason free rein to ad-lib a great deal of his dialog and make suggestions for the film; the scene at the "Choke and Puke" was Gleason's idea. Reynolds and Needham knew Gleason's comic talent would help make the film a success, and Gleason's characterization of Sheriff Justice strengthened the film's appeal to blue-collar audiences.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: During the 1980s, Gleason earned positive reviews playing opposite Laurence Olivier in the HBO dramatic two-man special, "Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson" (1983). He also gave a memorable performance as wealthy businessman U.S. Bates in the comedy "The Toy" (1982) opposite Richard Pryor. Although the movie was critically panned, Gleason and Pryor's performances were praised. His last film performance was opposite Tom Hanks in the Garry Marshall-directed "Nothing in Common" (1986), a success both critically and financially.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: For many years, Gleason would travel only by train; his fear of flying arose from an incident in his early movie career. Gleason would fly back and forth to Los Angeles for relatively minor movie work. After finishing one movie, the comedian boarded a plane for New York. When two of the plane's engines cut out in the middle of the flight, the pilot had to make an emergency landing in Tulsa, Oklahoma.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Although another plane was prepared for the passengers, Gleason had enough of flying. He went into downtown Tulsa, walked into a hardware store, and asked its owner to lend him $200 for the train trip to New York. The owner asked Gleason why he thought anyone would lend a stranger so much money. Gleason identified himself and explained his situation. The store owner said he would lend the money if the local theater had a photo of Gleason in his latest film. However, the publicity shots showed only the principal stars. Gleason proposed to buy two tickets to the movie and take the store owner; he would be able to see the actor in action. The two men watched the movie for an hour before Gleason appeared on screen. The owner gave Gleason the loan, and he took the next train to New York. There, he borrowed $200 to repay his benefactor.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason was greatly interested in the paranormal, reading many books on the topic, as well as books on parapsychology and UFOs. During the 1950s, he was a semi-regular guest on a paranormal-themed overnight radio show hosted by John Nebel, and he also wrote the introduction to Donald Bain's biography of Nebel. After his death, his large book collection was donated to the library of the University of Miami. A complete listing of the holdings of Gleason's library has been issued by the online cataloging service LibraryThing.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: According to writer Larry Holcombe, Gleason's known interest in UFOs allegedly prompted President Richard Nixon to share some information with him and to disclose some UFO data publicly.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason met dancer Genevieve Halford when they were working in vaudeville, and they started to date. Halford wanted to marry but Gleason was not ready to settle down. She said she would see other men if they did not marry. One evening when Gleason went onstage at the Club Miami in Newark, New Jersey, he saw Halford in the front row with a date. At the end of his show, Gleason went to the table and proposed to Halford in front of her date. They were married on September 20, 1936.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Halford wanted a quiet home life but Gleason fell back into spending his nights out. Separated for the first time in 1941 and reconciled in 1948, the couple had two daughters, Geraldine ( 1940) and Linda (b. 1942). Gleason and his wife informally separated again in 1951. It was during this period that Gleason had a romantic relationship with his secretary Honey Merrill, who was Miss Hollywood of 1956 and a showgirl at The Tropicana. Their relationship ended years later after Merrill met and eventually married Dick Roman.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In early 1954, Gleason suffered a broken leg and ankle on-air during his television show. His injuries sidelined him for several weeks. Halford visited Gleason while he was hospitalized, finding dancer Marilyn Taylor from his television show there. Halford filed for a legal separation in April 1954. A devout Catholic, Halford did not grant Gleason a divorce until 1970.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason met his second wife, Beverly McKittrick, at a country club in 1968, where she worked as a secretary. Ten days after his divorce from Halford was final, Gleason and McKittrick were married in a registry ceremony in Ashford, England on July 4, 1970.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1974, Marilyn Taylor encountered Gleason again when she moved to the Miami area to be near her sister June, whose dancers had starred on Gleason's shows for many years. She had been out of show business for nearly 20 years. In September 1974, Gleason filed for divorce from McKittrick (who contested, asking for a reconciliation). The divorce was granted on November 19, 1975. As a widow with a young son, Marilyn Taylor married Gleason on December 16, 1975; the marriage lasted until his death in 1987.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason's daughter Linda became an actress and married actor-playwright Jason Miller. Their son, Gleason's grandson, is actor Jason Patric.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: As early as 1952, when "The Jackie Gleason Show" captured Saturday night for CBS, Gleason regularly smoked six packs of cigarettes a day, but he never smoked on "The Honeymooners".


title: Jackie Gleason

text: In 1978, he suffered chest pains while touring in the lead role of Larry Gelbart's play "Sly Fox"; this forced him to leave the show in Chicago and go to the hospital. He was treated and released, but after suffering another bout the following week, he returned and underwent triple-bypass surgery.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: Gleason delivered a critically acclaimed performance as an infirm, acerbic, and somewhat Archie Bunker-like character in the Tom Hanks comedy-drama "Nothing in Common" (1986). This was Gleason's final film role. During production, it was determined that he was suffering from terminal colon cancer, which had metastasized to his liver. Gleason was also suffering from phlebitis and diabetes. "I won't be around much longer", he told his daughter at dinner one evening after a day of filming. Gleason kept his medical problems private, although there were rumors that he was seriously ill. A year later, on June 24, 1987, Gleason died at age 71 in his Florida home.


title: Jackie Gleason

text: After a funeral Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Mary, Gleason was entombed in a sarcophagus in a private outdoor mausoleum at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami. Gleason's sister-in-law, June Taylor of the June Taylor Dancers, is buried to the left of the mausoleum, next to her husband.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Army of Thieves is a 2021 heist comedy film directed by Matthias Schweighöfer from a screenplay by Shay Hatten, based on a story he wrote with Zack Snyder. A prequel to "Army of the Dead" (2021), it is the second installment in the "Army of the Dead" franchise; the film stars Schweighöfer, who reprises his role as Ludwig Dieter, alongside a supporting cast that includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, and Jonathan Cohen. Filming began in Germany and the Czech Republic in October 2020, and concluded by December 2020.


title: Army of Thieves

text: "Army of Thieves" was digitally released on October 29, 2021, on Netflix. It received lukewarm reviews from critics who praised the performances of Schweighöfer and Emmanuel as well as Schweighöfer's direction, but criticized the plot for being unoriginal.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert has a mundane life as a bank teller in Potsdam, Germany. A zombie outbreak in Nevada dominates international news, giving him nightmares about zombies. He also produces YouTube videos about safecracking that receive no attention until a mysterious figure comments on his most recent, inviting him to an underground safecracking competition. Sebastian wins the contest and is introduced to Gwendoline Starr, a skilled jewel thief who had commented upon his YouTube video.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Gwendoline recruits Sebastian into a heist crew consisting of herself, expert hacker Korina Dominguez, getaway driver Rolph and gunman Brad Cage to break into three banks that have the three safes created by legendary locksmith Hans Wagner, which currently belongs to billionaire Bly Tanaka. The safes will be decommissioned in less than a week, so time is running out for someone to break into them.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Sebastian, a theoretical expert on Wagner's work and safecracking but with no practical experience, is convinced by Gwendoline to join them for the challenge of breaking into a Wagner safe. Together, the crew successfully undertake their heist of the first safe in Paris, escaping with only a fraction of the money that is actually in it. Gwendoline justifies this as the challenge and reputation being better than any major monetary gain.


title: Army of Thieves

text: As the crew celebrates after the Paris heist, Sebastian develops feelings for Gwendoline, drawing jealousy from Brad, her boyfriend since their teenage years, learning his real name was Alexis. The crew travels to Prague, the location of the second safe, and are followed by Delacroix, an obsessive Interpol agent leading a unit that has been trying to capture Gwendoline and the crew for years after Brad shot him during a theft.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Sebastian and Gwendoline enter the bank but are soon identified by security, forcing Brad to create a distraction with a pretend robbery. Sebastian cracks the second safe, leaving with Gwendoline and another haul of money as Delacroix and his team race to the bank to stop them. Brad is shot in the shoulder by a security guard and narrowly escapes the bank, ahead of Sebastian and Gwendoline. Brad deliberately leaves Sebastian behind as the team flees, forcing him to shake off the pursuing police alone.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Angry at Brad's actions, Gwendoline and Korina leave the crew. However, the original plan was to ditch Sebastian after the three heists were complete. The women head back to Potsdam and reunite with Sebastian, telling him that the pursuit of the Wagner challenge is more important to them than any monetary gain.


title: Army of Thieves

text: The trio heads to St. Moritz, location of the last safe in Europe, while Interpol also arrives. Delacroix's team believes they have a lead on the theft, only to be tricked again by them. They hijacked the safe during its transfer from the casino. Their hijacking also usurps Brad and Rolph's idea of robbing the safe.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Gwendoline and Sebastian leave St. Moritz on a lorry, chased by Brad and Rolph. Korina, caught by Interpol, manages to warn them about the other two before selling them out in exchange for her family's safety. Sebastian has to crack the safe in the lorry while Brad, Rolph, and Interpol pursue them. He succeeds, finding another large haul of cash. However, before they can leave with it, Rolph and an increasingly unstable Brad arrive. She overpowers and handcuffs them to the truck for Interpol to find before leaving with Sebastian.


title: Army of Thieves

text: Before escaping on a boat from the town of Hallstatt, Austria, Sebastian and Gwendoline confess their mutual feelings. However, Delacroix catches them, resulting in a standoff between him and Gwendoline. Out of love for Sebastian, she sacrifices herself to be arrested so that he can escape, promising to find him once she is free. Sebastian goes, vowing he will be reunited with Gwendoline one day.