Art Carney Dies

Emmy winner Art Carney, best known as Jackie Gleason's sidekick Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, died November 9 in Westbrook, Conn. He was 85. Carney was retired and died after a long illness.

Carney won six Emmys, including three for supporting actor on The Honeymooners, which originally ran from October 1955 to September 1956. Carney was Gleason's best comic foil, and he often stole more than his fair share of the audience's laughter on the television classic. His character, Ed Norton, became famous for his outfit, which inspired laughter by itself: a T-shirt with rolled up sleeves, dark vest, and hat with upturned brim.

"There’s nothing you could give Art that he couldn’t do, said Larry Gelbart to the Archive of American Television. "He could play very sophisticated material, and very broad material. And sometimes make broad material seem very sophisticated."
Carney won an Oscar for the movie Harry & Tonto, and was among this year's inductees of the Hall of Fame at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Carney was born in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., on Nov. 4, 1918, and moved to Westbrook in 1957. He was an Army veteran.

He is survived by his wife, Jean Myers Carney, and two sons and a daughter. He was buried at Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook.

Here are some more remembrances collected from the Archive of Amercian Television:

Joyce Randolph - "Trixie Norton", The Honeymooners:
"He’s so fantastic. He can do anything, just anything. Once in a while he and Jackie would play Laurel and Hardy, in rehearsal. And he could do it perfectly. He’s done serious things since then and he’s just naturally a funny man. And he was the perfect foil for Jackie. I don’t think that Mister Gleason would have gotten as far as he did without Art Carney."

Leonard Stern - Writer, The Honeymooners:

"Art is a consummate actor. He lost himself in the character. I’ve worked with him many times since then. And Ed Norton was an original character and beautifully interpreted by Carney and also he embellished it with moments from his life."

June Taylor - Choreographer, The Jackie Gleason Show:

"Art is such a great guy, and when he’s working with Jackie he becomes so alive. He’s not that way off stage. He’s very quiet and hardly talks. And you can’t ruffle his feathers. He lives in a world all his own. He was very dear, and of course, he loved to dance."