Art Carney

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Art Carney

Art Carney as Ed Norton from The Honeymooners.
Birth name Arthur William Matthew Carney
Born November 4, 1918
Flag of United States Mount Vernon, New York
Died November 9, 2003, age 85
Chester, Connecticut
Academy Awards
Best Actor
1974 Harry and Tonto

Art Carney (November 4, 1918November 9, 2003) was an Academy Award winning American actor in film, stage, television, and radio.

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Born Arthur William Matthew Carney in Mount Vernon, New York, he gained lifelong fame for his portrayal of upstairs neighbor and sewer worker Ed Norton opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the popular television comedy show The Honeymooners and on the Gleason variety shows that preceded and followed the sitcom.

His portrayal of Ed Norton has had a big influence on pop culture,particularly by being the inspiration for the Hanna-Barbera characters Yogi Bear and Barney Rubble. Art Carney also had many screen and stage roles, including the portrayal on Broadway of Felix Unger in The Odd Couple (opposite Walter Matthau as Oscar). He was nominated for seven Emmy Awards and won six.

Beyond The Honeymooners (sketch and sitcom versions), Carney served as Gleason's sidekick and troupe member during many of the The Great One's years on television, which included several CBS runs of the Gleason variety show and some Honeymooners specials on ABC.

Carney had been a busy radio actor before being drafted as an infantryman during World War II. He participated in the Battle of Normandy and was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

In 1974 he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Harry Coombes, an elderly man going on the road with his pet cat, in Harry and Tonto. In 1978, Carney appeared in The Star Wars Holiday Special, a spin-off film to the Star Wars series. In it, he played Trader Saun Dann, a member of the Rebel Alliance who was a close friend of Chewbacca and his family. He also appeared in such films as W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, The Late Show, House Calls, Movie Movie and Going in Style. Later movies included The Muppets Take Manhattan, and the thriller Firestarter.

In 1981, he portrayed Harry Truman, an 84-year-old lodge owner in the half-fiction/half-reality based account of events leading to the eruption of Mount St. Helens, in the movie titled St. Helens.

Although he retired in the late 1980s, he returned in 1993 to make a small cameo in the Arnold Schwarzenegger flop Last Action Hero as Schwarzenegger's second cousin Frank who is tortured by the movie's main villain.

Art Carney as Saun Dann in The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Art Carney as Saun Dann in The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Art Carney died of natural causes at his home in Westbrook, Connecticut, five days after his 85th birthday; he is survived by his widow and children. Carney is interred at Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Middlesex County, Connecticut. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6627 Hollywood Blvd.

He was married three times to two women:

  • Jean Myers, from 1940 to 1965; and again from 1980 to his death: 3 children
  • Barbara Isaac from December 21, 1966 to 1977

Awards
Preceded by
Jack Lemmon
for Save the Tiger
Academy Award for Best Actor
1974
for Harry and Tonto
Succeeded by
Jack Nicholson
for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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