![]() Radio proved to be his professional salvation. He quit before being fired at the sponsor’s insistence.Īfter leaving Heidt, Carney experienced a lean period in which he worked sporadically in nightclubs and on the vaudeville circuit. His condition became all too apparent when he couldn’t spell Tums, the sponsor’s name, on the air. 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.Ĭarney quit the Heidt band in 1941 after showing up too drunk to announce the radio show. In 1940, while still with the band, Carney married his high school sweetheart, Jean Myers. On the road with the band, Carney did his impressions, sang novelty songs and served as announcer for Heidt’s “Pot o’ Gold” radio program. Carney’s oldest brother, Jack, then an agent for Music Corp.of America, arranged the audition with Heidt, who hired Carney on the spot. His impressions were so good that, after graduating in 1937, he was hired to join the Horace Heidt dance band. He also won amateur contests with his impersonations and was named “Wittiest Boy” in his yearbook. Roosevelt.īy high school, Carney was entertaining at school dances and for civic organizations with an act that consisted of a tap-dancing routine and his imitations. 4, 1918, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., the youngest of six sons of newspaperman-publicist Edward Carney and Helen Carney.Īlthough quiet and introverted, Carney was a born mimic who by grade school was entertaining family members with his impressions of everyone from Edward G. “They were like Laurel and Hardy and, in fact, once in a while they played Laurel and Hardy in rehearsal, and they were very funny.”Īrthur William Matthew Carney was born Nov. And Jackie could not have done the show without Art Carney and even said so. “Art gained most of his fame playing Ed Norton because he was so amazingly funny,” Randolph told The Times on Tuesday. Gleason died in 1987, and Audrey Meadows, his TV wife, Alice, died in 1996. “He’s a perfect counterbalance to this huge overstatement.”Ĭarney’s passing leaves only Joyce Randolph, who played Norton’s wife, Trixie, among the 1950s situation comedy’s quartet of co-stars. “If you look back on ‘The Honeymooners,’ there’s Jackie Gleason, the bombastic, overstating, larger-than-life character and here’s Ed Norton, a realistic, down-to-earth Everyman,” said Michael Marsden, professor of English and cultural studies at Eastern Kentucky University and co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television. Thanks to reruns of one of the most popular comedies from TV’s Golden Age, Norton likely will continue to be the one role Carney is most associated with. “I’d say, ‘Papa, just sign the card and let me go back to school,’ ” Carney recalled.Īt the rehearsal, Gleason told him, “Whatever you’re doing, keep it in.” 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. Norton never failed to exasperate his pal “Ralphie boy” with his arm-flailing, time-consuming flourishes whenever he had to sign a piece of paper.Ĭarney 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. He then steps up, plants his feet firmly, offers an arm-waving salute and says, “Hellooooo, ball!” “Wait a minute, I think I know what it means,” Norton says, taking the club out of Ralph’s hand. What do they mean “address” the ball? Ralph asks. 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.” “Of course, he bought everything on time - he bought his newspapers on time.” “Norton certainly had the better apartment,” Carney said. ![]() Once, he said, when Norton’s apartment was shown, it had a leopard-skin spread on the bed and a horse with a clock in its stomach that he’d won in Coney Island. You had to imagine what the bedroom looked like.” He told the Toronto Star in 1987 that Norton and Kramden’s relationship “was crude in a way - with that set and everything the pan under the icebox. Carney viewed his lovable, dim-bulb Norton and Gleason’s blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden as a Brooklyn version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. ![]()
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