Classic Hollywood: Art Carney (not just 'The Honeymooners')

Nov. 6, 2015 12:05 AM PT

This is Susan King, guardian of the Golden Age of Hollywood galaxy. And every Friday in my Classic Hollywood newsletter I talk about the notable births of the week, movie and TV milestones, events around town, vintage DVD releases, new books about the golden age, memories of legends I've interviewed and prominent deaths.

Art Carney as Ed Norton from the classic television show "The Honeymooners," in this August 1955 file photo.

Art Carney as Ed Norton from "The Honeymooners," in a file photo from August 1955. (AP Photo / CBS Television)

Monday marks the 12th anniversary of the death of the comic master Art Carney, who is best known for his indelible, multi-Emmy-winning turn as Ed Norton, the sweet but clueless sewer worker buddy of Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) in "The Honeymooners." Carney died at 85 in Westbrook, Conn.

Carney became an unexpected movie star after he won the lead actor Oscar for Paul Mazursky's captivating 1974 dramedy "Harry and Tonto," in which he played a widower who goes on a cross-country trek with his orange cat Tonto after his New York apartment is torn down.

In 2011, I interviewed Mazursky about "Harry and Tonto," a film, he said, that no studio wanted to make. "They were afraid of a movie about an old man," he said. "They kept saying it's a great script, but who wants to see an old person?"

Alan Ladd Jr., who was running 20th Century Fox at the time, did.

"I made it for $980,000," Mazursky said.

Mazursky first went to James Cagney, who told the filmmaker that he was retired. Danny Kaye wanted more jokes. And then Mazursky went to Cary Grant, who, like Cagney, told him he was retired.

"Then I went after Art Carney," Mazursky said. "I saw him on Broadway a couple of years before in 'The Rope Dancers.' Of course, I had seen him in 'The Honeymooners.' "

Carney wasn't interested, noting that he was in his 50s "and you want this guy to be in his 70s," Mazursky said.

"Harry & Tonto" star Art Carney in file photo from Feb. 24, 1975.

"Harry and Tonto" star Art Carney in file photo from Feb. 24, 1975. (20th Century Fox)

Mazursky told Carney, " 'Art, this is the first time I met you and you look like you are in your 70s -- you're balding, you wear a hearing aid and you have a bum leg.' He told me, 'You don’t want me. I'm an alcoholic.' "

Carney, Mazursky noted, went off the wagon one night. "He had been out on a binge and he showed up on location in Chicago in a taxi in the morning loaded. I took him up to his room, put him in the shower and made him a pot of coffee. He was easy to direct."

Here is the L.A. Times obituary of Carney as it appeared on Nov. 12, 2003.

DVD vault

Warner Archive must have gone deep, deep into the vaults to find the 1965-66 NBC sitcom "Hank," a series I watched a few times when it aired on Friday nights at 8 after another one-season wonder, "Camp Runamuck." The complete "Hank" series was just released on DVD.

Despite the fact that it was short-lived, "Hank" had a pretty good pedigree. The series was created by none other than Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson and starred the underrated, charming Dick Kallman as Hank, an enterprising young man raising his sister (Katie Sweet). He would don various disguises to illegally attend classes at a local college while working several jobs, including running a lunch truck.

Don’t touch that dial

"The Thin Man" stars, from left: Myrna Loy, Asta the dog and William Powell. (Handout)

One of my favorite movie couples is William Powell and Myrna Loy, especially as the sophisticated married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles in MGM's popular "The Thin Man" comedy mystery series. They starred in 13 films at the studio. On Tuesday TCM is airing seven of their best, including "The Thin Man" (1934) and "After the Thin Man" (1936), which features a very young Jimmy Stewart; the snappy 1940 farce "I Love You Again"; the 1936 Oscar-winning best film "The Great Ziegfeld"; and the 1934 gangster flick "Manhattan Melodrama," also starring Clark Gable. Public enemy No. 1 John Dillinger was gunned down outside a Chicago movie theater after attending "Manhattan Melodrama."

Book nook

Blond, peppy and sexy Thelma Todd more than held her own with many of the top film comedy teams of the early 1930s, such as the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy and Wheeler & Woolsey. She even opened the popular Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe in the Pacific Palisades. But on Dec. 16, 1935, the 29-year-old Todd was found dead in a car with the ignition on in a garage. And for the last 80 years, her death has been one of Hollywood's big mysteries. Officially, her death was declared accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, but rumors of suicide and murder have swirled around her demise for eight decades. Michelle Morgan's new book "The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd" offers fresh evidence to support that she was murdered. And Morgan has lined up a group of suspects including Todd's lover, her ex-husband and even the mob.

Around town

Harold Lloyd and the Beastie Boys? The AFI Fest is offering a unique screening of Lloyd's 1923 silent comedy masterpiece "Safety Last!" at 5 p.m. at the El Capitan Theatre. Instead of organ or orchestra musical accompaniment, there will be a live deejay re-score by KCRW-FM's Thomas Golubic, an L.A.-based music supervisor, deejay and Grammy-nominated record producer. The re-score will feature live instruments, samples by Mocean Worker and songs by the Beastie Boys and even James Brown. Tickets are free.

Sneak peek

In Sunday's Classic Hollywood, I chat with actress-writer-director Illeana Douglas ("Cape Fear," "To Die For"), who has written a fun, engaging autobiography, "I Blame Dennis Hopper and Other Stories From a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies." She talks about her beloved grandfather, two-time Oscar-winning actor Melvyn Douglas; her mentor Roddy McDowall; and her encounter with her idol Marlon Brando.