Art Carney, who won an Oscar for “Harry and Tonto” and originated the role of fussy Felix Unger in “The Odd Couple” on Broadway – but who is best remembered as Jackie Gleason’s sewer-worker pal Ed Norton on “The Honeymooners” – has died. He was 85.
Carney, a versatile stage, screen and television actor who was equally adept at comedy and drama, died Sunday after a long illness. The family would not specify the illness or say where Carney, a longtime resident of Westbrook, Conn., died.
Carney won his Academy Award for best actor in the 1974 film playing Harry, a retired teacher and widower who sets off on a cross-country journey with Tonto, his cat, after his New York apartment building is torn down.
But even after winning Hollywood’s top acting prize for his first starring film role, Carney said people still greeted him with, “How are things down in the sewer?”
“Not that I ever regret playing Ed Norton,” said Carney, who got his acting start on radio in the early 1940s and made his TV debut in 1948.
Among Carney’s later films are “The Late Show,” a 1977 detective story co-starring Lily Tomlin; and “Going in Style,” a 1979 comedy with Carney, George Burns and Lee Strasberg. His final feature appearance was a small role in “The Last Action Hero” in 1993.
There’s no denying the effect Norton, the self-described “subterranean sanitation engineer,” had on Carney’s career.
He won Emmys for best supporting actor in 1953, 1954 and 1955 playing Norton in “The Honeymooners” sketches on “The Jackie Gleason Show.” As Carney said decades later, “I brought the sewer worker to life.”
Clad in his trademark T-shirt, open vest and beat-up felt hat with the upturned brim – a hat Carney paid $5 for in 1935 while still in high school – he became one of the most memorable second bananas in TV history.
Carney viewed the lovable, dim-bulb Norton and blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden as a Brooklyn version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
One classic Norton moment comes when Ralph is trying to learn to play golf and Norton is reading from a book on how to execute a proper swing: “First step up, plant your feet firmly and address the ball.”
What do they mean “address” the ball? Ralph asks.
“Wait a minute, I think I know what it means,” Norton says, taking the club out of Ralph’s hand. He then steps up, plants his feet firmly, offers an arm-waving salute and says, “Hellooooo ball!”
Norton never failed to exasperate his pal “Ralphie boy” with his arm-flaying, time-consuming flourishes whenever he had to sign a piece of paper.
Carney stumbled on the signature piece of business in rehearsal one day, when he simply embellished something his father had done whenever he had to sign young Art’s report card. The senior Carney would make sure the light was just right, move objects around on the table, shoot his arms out, check the pen and line up the paper just so.
“I’d say, ‘Papa, just sign the card and let me go back to school,’ ” Carney recalled.
Carney’s passing leaves only Joyce Randolph, who played Norton’s wife, Trixie, among the 1950s situation comedy’s quartet of co-stars. Gleason died in 1987 and Audrey Meadows, Gleason’s TV wife, Alice, died in 1996.
Arthur William Matthew Carney was born Nov. 4, 1918, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., the youngest of six sons of newspaperman-publicist Edward Carney and Helen Carney.
Although quiet and introverted, Carney was a born mimic who by grammar school was entertaining family members with his impressions of everyone from Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Durante to Franklin D. Roosevelt. His impressions were so good that, after graduating from high school in 1937, he was hired to join the Horace Heidt band.
In 1940, while still with the band, Carney married his high school sweetheart, Jean Myers, with whom he had three children: Eileen, Brian and Paul.
While working with Heidt, Carney also began drinking – something that would later cause problems in both his personal and professional life, as would bouts of depression.
In 1944, he was drafted into the Army. Arriving in France two months after D-Day, he had just set up his machine gun and was filling his canteen with water when a piece of shrapnel from an enemy mortar round ripped into his right thigh. The wound permanently shortened his right leg by three-fourths of an inch, causing him occasional pain and a slight limp the rest of his life.
After his discharge, Carney returned to CBS radio, where he became a second banana for the likes of Milton Berle, Bert Lahr, Edgar Bergen and Fred Allen. In 1950, he began his association with Gleason, the new host of “Cavalcade of Stars,” a big-budget comedy-variety show on the DuMont network. “The Honeymooners” sketches were introduced in 1951.
“I became Norton, the one guy in the world who was even dumber than Ralph Kramden, the boob Gleason played,” Carney once recalled. “I liked it because I could be myself, make mistakes in grammar, and be comfortable.”
“The Honeymooners” appeared in various forms, sketches or half-hour sitcom, from 1951 to 1956 and was revived briefly in 1971. The shows can still be seen on cable.
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