Biography for
Art Carney More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

4 November 1918, Mount Vernon, New York, USA

Date of Death

9 November 2003, Chester, Connecticut, USA

Birth Name

Arthur William Matthew Carney

Nickname

Mr. C

Height

5' 10" (1.78 m)

Spouse

Jean Myers	(1980 - 9 November 2003) (his death)
Barbara Isaac	(22 December 1966 - 1977) (divorced)
Jean Myers	(15 August 1940 - 1965) (divorced) 3 children

Trivia

Brother of actor/director Fred Carney.

Father of actor Brian Carney.

He was the voice of "Red Lantern:The Fish Priminister" on "The Land Of The Lost" children's radio show, which also starred Mae Questel and Naomi Lewis. "The Land Of The Lost" was heard on The ABC Radio Network during the mid 1940s. Mr. Carney also performed on another TV puppet special with "The Bil & Cora Baird Puppets" - "Art Carney Meets The Sorcerer's Apprentice" on The ABC TV Network. The show aired in the early 1960s.

He was a voice-over regular on the popular 1930s radio series "Gangbusters" that featured weekly episodes based actual crime incidents. Each program ended with various descriptions of wanted criminals, many of whom were later arrested due to avid listener participation.

The voice of Red Lantern on radio's "Land of the Lost" was originally done by Junius Matthews, who did a lot of movies around that time, and this show overlapped with his schedule, so then it was taken over by Art Carney.

World War II veteran stationed in France as an infantryman.Wounded in leg by shrapnel and was hospitalized for nine months. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Originated the role of Felix Ungar (opposite Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison) in Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" on Broadway in 1965.

Won a talent contest in elementary school and another at A. B. Davis High School, in Mount Vernon, from which he graduated in 1936. Had only a high school education, no formal training and never took an acting class.

A wound in the leg while serving as a World War II infantryman left one leg slightly shorter and a noticeable limp for the rest of his life.

Won the Academy Award for playing the 72-year-old Harry in the sentimental film "Harry and Tonto." He was only 55 at the time but used makeup, grew a mustache, whitened his hair and stopped masking his limp.

Suffered a nervous breakdown over the end of his 25-year marriage to wife Jean due to his addictions to alcohol, amphetamines and barbiturates. After recovering fully in the 70s, he not only won an Oscar award but also his wife. They remarried.

He talked his way into a job with the popular Horace Heidt Orchestra and went on the road for more than three years, doing impressions, novelty songs, and some announcing for Heidt's "Pot o' Gold" radio show. In 1941, when the orchestra was asked to make a movie, Carney was handed a bit part. He also specialized in dialects.

Jackie Gleason once stated that Carney was 90% responsible for the success of "The Honeymooners" (1955).

He was such a talented voice artist that he sometimes substituted for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his famous "Fireside Chats" when Roosevelt was too ill to speak.

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 93-94. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

3 children, Brian, Eileen, and Paul.

Was nominated for Broadway's 1969 Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for Brian Friel's "Lovers."

The last words he ever spoke on-screen were "I'm outta here..." in the film Last Action Hero (1993).

Before playing Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, Carney played a cop who gets hit by a barrel of flour in the first "Honeymooners" sketch on "The Jackie Gleason Show" (1952).

Beat out Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Albert Finney, and Al Pacino to win his first and only Best Actor Oscar for Harry and Tonto (1974).

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 63-65. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

In playing the 72 year old Harry character in Harry and Tonto (1974), the 55-year-old Carney convinced director Paul Mazursky by growing his own mustache, whitening his hair, wearing his own hearing aid and not trying to mask the limp he received from a World War II injury.

It was while appearing in "The Odd Couple" on Broadway that Carney suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by the failure of his twenty-five-year first marriage. He was forced to leave the play and enter a sanitarium for nearly six months.

First appeared as Ed Norton, the foil for star Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden character, when "The Honeymooners" was a regular skit between 1951-52 on the DuMont Network's "Cavalcade of Stars" (1949) TV program.

His radio role as "Philly" on the "Joe and Ethel Turp Show" foreshadowed his "Honeymooners" characterization of Ed Norton.

Through his brother Jack, a musical booking agent, Carney landed his first show-business job in 1936, as a mimic and novelty singer for Horace Heidt's band. Due to this association with Heidt, he made his unbilled film debut with Pot o' Gold (1941) as a band member and radio announcer.

Appears as Ed Norton, with Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, on a 44¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Early TV Memories issue honoring "The Honeymooners" (1955). The stamp was issued 11 August 2009.

Personal Quotes

"I love Ed Norton and what he did for my career. But the truth is that we couldn't have been more different. Norton was the total extrovert, there was no way you could put down his infectious good humor. Me? I'm a loner and a worrier."

"I don't tell jokes, and if I tried, I couldn't hold an audience's attention for five minutes.

"An actor can survive a bad play, particularly if his performance is well received. But a bad movie..."

How would you like to go through life with your name synonymous with sewage? --AC, during a 1974 interview with columnist Earl Wilson

Where Are They Now

(November 2003) Prior to his death he had been retired for more than a decade, living a quiet life at his home in Westbrook, Connecticut, USA.

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