Art "Ed Norton" Carney dead at 85

Posted:
Nov 11, 2003

"As they say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man," Art Carney, as sanitation worker Ed Norton, Ralph Kramden's upstairs neighbor and best friend, quipped in an episode of The Honeymooners.

Carney, who co-starred with Jackie Gleason in the hit 1950s TV series before winning the 1974 Academy Award for best actor in Harry and Tonto, died Sunday -- five days after his 85th birthday -- in Chester, Connecticut. He had been ill for some time.

He was buried Tuesday after a small, private funeral.

Ed Norton's trademark turned-up porkpie hat and unbuttoned vest, along with his shouts of "Hey, Ralphie boy!", made his character a virtual trademark for Carney. Five of the seven Emmy Awards that he received in his lifetime were for that role.

Last month, Carney was chosen to be inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. Ceremonies are planned for February.

Carney co-starred with Gleason in character in various shows from 1951 to 1956. In 1966, The Honeymooners -- as the famous sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show was known -- won a brief revival in another CBS variety series, in which Gleason and Carney appeared again. Carney was Norton one more time in the 1976 special The Honeymooners: The Second Honeymoon.

His easygoing personality as Ed Norton wasn't lost on Warner Bros., which parodied the character as "Ned Morton" -- alongside "Ralph Crumden" -- in four cartoons. Daws Butler voiced both characters in all four.

In the 1956 Merrie Melodie Half-Fare Hare, Crumden and Morton appear as two boxcar bums whose interruption by the appearance of Bugs Bunny turns into opportunity when they get a sudden craving for rabbit dinner.

Crumden and Morton then became mice (as did wives Alice and Trixie, voiced by June Foray) in a trilogy of Looney Tunes.

In The Honey-Mousers (1956), the Crumdens are nearly starved to death when Morton tells them that the new neighbors are like having Greenblatt's delicatessen next door. Cheese It, The Cat! (1957) depicted a new cat giving Ralph and Ned trouble getting Alice's surprise cake. And in 1960's Mice Follies, Ralph and Ned leave the lodge meeting at 2 a.m., with Ned teasing the cat en route home.

When Yogi Bear first appeared as part of Hanna-Barbera Studios' The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958, Butler used the same Art Carney/Ed Norton voice characterization for the voice of Yogi.

Carney himself voiced a pair of TV specials, though not in the Norton character.

In Star Wars Holiday Special (Nelvana Limited, 1978), he appeared as Saundan. The otherwise live-action show contained a 12-minute animated sequence, produced by George Lucas as a test for a possible Star Wars animated film. Broadcast only once, the program was never released on home video.

The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold (Rankin Bass Productions, 1981) starred the Irish-American Carney as narrator Blarney Killakilarney, who sang two songs, "The Golden Gold of Ireland" and "Killakilarney Shoes."

Born into an Irish Catholic family in Mount Vernon, New York on November 4, 1918, he was baptized Arthur William Matthew Carney. His father was a newspaperman and publicist.

In his younger days, he appeared in amateur theatricals and imitated radio personalities. In 1937, he was hired to do impressions and sing novelty songs traveling with Horace Heidt's dance band.

Carney long battled alcoholism, acknowleding in a 1974 People magazine interview that he was an alcoholic even at age 18.

He fought a drinking problem for several years after The Honeymooners went off the air. While co-starring with Walter Matthau in the 1960s Broadway run of The Odd Couple, his behavior became erratic, and he dropped out of the show. Carney spent nearly six months in a sanitarium.

Carney stopped drinking during the making of Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto, in which he portrayed a 72-year-old widower traveling with his pet cat from New York to Chicago. At the time, Carney was only 56. He beat out Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman for an Oscar.

Other films included Going in Style with George Burns, Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Firestarter with Drew Barrymore. He earned a Tony nomination in 1969 for the play Lovers.

His final Emmy was awarded for the 1984 TV-movie, Terrible Joe Moran, about an ex-boxing champion.

In 1940, Carney married his high school sweetheart, Jean Myers, but the marriage broke up. He married Barbara Isaac in 1966. A decade later, they divorced, and Carney remarried his first wife in 1980.

"I loved Art Carney. I was a huge fan of The Honeymooners, and I loved Jackie Gleason, who was a genius," actor Billy Bob Thornton said. "But I was probably more struck by Art Carney than Gleason. You just couldn't wait for him to come through the door again."

"Art was, and is one of the most endearing men I have ever met," Audrey Meadows, who portrayed Alice Kramden, wrote in her 1994 memoir Love, Alice." Carney was a "witty and delightful companion who went out of his way to help each new actor find his niche" on The Honeymooners, she added.

Gleason once recalled: "The first time I saw the guy act, I knew I would have to work twice as hard for my laughs. He was funny as hell."

In tribute to Carney, TV Land will air all 39 episodes of The Honeymooners, starting at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Friday.