 NEW
YORK (Reuters) - Actor Art Carney, best known
as the awkward, endearing sidekick to Jackie Gleason in the 1950s television
series "The Honeymooners," has died at age 85, a Connecticut
funeral home said on Tuesday.
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- Carney, who lived in Westbrook, Connecticut, died on
Sunday after a long illness, according to a statement issued by the local
Swan Funeral Homes Inc.
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- Carney had a long career in vaudeville, radio, television,
Broadway and Hollywood, but is best remembered as Ed Norton, an "underground
sanitation expert" who appeared clad in a trademark T-shirt, vest
and pork-pie hat on CBS' "The Honeymooners."
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- Set in a rundown New York tenement, the show became a
classic of early live television and has enjoyed huge popularity in syndication.
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- Carney's cry of "Hey, Ralphie boy!" to co-star
Gleason invariably meant a new misadventure -- or another get-rich-quick
scheme gone awry.
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- His good-natured quirkiness, bumbling affability and
physical agility made him the perfect complement to Gleason's easily frustrated,
easily angered Ralph Kramden, a loudmouthed bus driver.
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- Broadcast live, the show had remarkable mishaps. When
Gleason once missed a cue to enter during a live broadcast, Carney looked
inside the set refrigerator, pulled out an orange and for almost a full
minute peeled it with humorous aplomb. The moment was remembered as a classic
comedy ad-lib.
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- Carney won the 1974 best actor Oscar for his portrayal
of an aging loner who travels cross country with his cat in the film "Harry
and Tonto."
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- He won five Emmy awards for his role on "The Honeymooners."
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- Carney was born Nov. 4, 1918, in Mount Vernon, New York.
He took a job as a jazz pianist after high school but ended up on stage
impersonating such statesmen as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
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- He moved on to freelancing on radio serials, mysteries
and dramas in the 1940s. Carney enlisted in the army and received a leg
wound in France that gave him a slight limp.
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- In 1951, Carney met Gleason while appearing on the popular
variety show "Cavalcade of Stars." There the two paired up for
skits that would spin off to become "The Honeymooners."
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- Gleason returned to CBS with a lavish hour-long variety
program in 1962. Carney rejoined the cast in 1966, and "The Honeymooners"
was revived as an hour-long segment filling more than half the remaining
"Jackie Gleason Show" telecasts during its final four years.
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- On Broadway, Carney co-starred with Walter Matthau in
Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple."
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- Privately, Carney was a shy man who fought a long battle
with depression and alcoholism.
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- "I'm a serious guy," he once said. "I'm
not 'on' all the time, you know, as far as being funny at home or at parties.
I tend to be more of an introvert, I think, and I think my extrovert qualities
come out in my work."
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- "I enjoy doing comedy," he said, "but
I'm not a comedian. ... I'm an actor that's done an awful lot of comedy."
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- Gleason died of cancer in 1987. His third wife, Marilyn
Gleason, said Carney's death marked "the passing of another era, and
it hurts."
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- "Everybody loved him," she said. "You
couldn't help it." (Additional reporting by Greg Frost in Boston and
Ellen Wulfhorst in New York)
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