ACTOR
Art Carney
26 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (26)
- #001
When his 25-year marriage to his wife Jean ended, Art Carney suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by addictions to alcohol, amphetamines and barbiturates. After recovering fully in the 1970s, he won back not only the Oscar but also his wife: they remarried.
- #002
Jackie Gleason once said that 90% of the success of The Honeymooners (1955) was due to Carney.
- #003
A World War II veteran who served as an infantryman in France, Art Carney was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and spent nine months in hospital. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
- #004
Art Carney won his first and only Best Actor Oscar for Harry and Tonto (1974), beating out Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Albert Finney and Al Pacino.
- #005
Carney, who was 55 when he played the 72-year-old Harry Coombes in Harry and Tonto (1974), convinced director Paul Mazursky by growing his own mustache, whitening his hair, wearing his own hearing aid and refusing to mask the limp caused by the injury he suffered in World War II.
- #006
Art Carney had been retired for more than a decade before his death, living a quiet life at his home in Westbrook, Connecticut.
- #007
Art Carney was a regular voice performer on "Gangbusters," the popular 1930s radio series whose weekly episodes were based on real crimes. Each program ended with various descriptions of wanted criminals, many of whom were later arrested thanks to heavy listener participation.
- #008
A wound to his leg while serving as an infantryman in World War II left one of Art Carney's legs slightly shorter and gave him a visible limp for the rest of his life.
- #009
Before playing Ed Norton in The Honeymooners (1955), Carney played a policeman hit with a barrel of flour in the first Honeymooners sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952).
- #010
Art Carney first appeared as Ed Norton, the sewer worker friend of Jackie Gleason's star character Ralph Kramden, when The Honeymooners (1955) was a regular sketch on the DuMont Network television program Cavalcade of Stars (1949) between 1951 and 1952.
- #011
In a case of art imitating life (no pun intended), the last words Art Carney spoke on screen were his character's dying words: "I'm outta here…" in the action-comedy-fantasy film Last Action Hero (1993).
- #012
Art Carney won a talent contest in elementary school and another one at A.B. Davis High School in Mount Vernon, NY, from which he graduated in 1936. He had only a high school education, received no formal training and never took an acting lesson.
- #013
After his death, Art Carney was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
- #014
Art Carney had three children with Jean Myers: Eileen Carney (born 1942), Brian Carney (born 1946) and Paul Carney (born 1952).
- #015
In the Early TV Memories issue commemorating The Honeymooners (1955), a 44¢ US commemorative postage stamp shows Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden with Ed Norton. The stamp was issued on August 11, 2009.
- #016
Art Carney was nominated for the 1969 Tony Award for Best Actor (Dramatic) for Brian Friel's "Lovers."
- #017
On February 8, 1960, Art Carney was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6627 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
- #018
Carney joined the historic theater club The Lambs in 1960. His Honeymooners colleague Joyce Randolph, still a member, was there too; her husband had served as president of The Lambs for 11 years.
- #019
Art Carney landed a job with the popular Horace Heidt Orchestra and spent more than three years on the road, performing, creating new songs and doing some announcing for Heidt's radio program "Pot o' Gold." When the orchestra was asked to make a film in 1941, Carney was given a small role. He also became skilled at dialects.
- #020
Carney was a talented and entertaining jazz pianist.
- #021
He was the father of actor Brian Carney.
- #022
Through his brother Jack, a music booking agent, Carney landed his first job in show business in 1936 as an impressionist and novelty singer with Horace Heidt's band. Because of this connection to Heidt, he made his uncredited film debut in Pot o' Gold (1941) as a band member and radio announcer.
- #023
He was the brother of actor/director Fred Carney.
- #024
His maternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, and his father was also of Irish descent.
- #025
In the mid-1970s he was briefly linked to Bebe Kelly (an actress).
- #026
He was born on the same date as Cameron Mitchell (famous for the TV series The High Chaparral (1967)).
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