Carleton Carpenter

Acting career

Carpenter launched his performing life as a magician and a Broadway actor. His first Broadway show was David Merrick's initial production, Bright Boy, in 1944. He went on to co-star in Three to Make Ready with Ray Bolger, John Murray Anderson's Almanac, and Hotel Paradiso. On early television, he was a featured player on NBC's Campus Hoopla, which aired from 1946 to 1947 via WNBT in New York City.

Independent producer Louis de Rochemont brought Carpenter to Hollywood in 1949 to play the boyfriend in Lost Boundaries, later casting him again in The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951). Carpenter signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1950 and made eight films in three years: Father of the Bride, Three Little Words, Summer Stock, Two Weeks With Love, Vengeance Valley, Fearless Fagan (one of his two leading roles), Sky Full of Moon (his other leading role), and Take the High Ground!.

He gained fame in 1950 by teaming up with Debbie Reynolds in Three Little Words and Two Weeks with Love. In a guest sequence in Three Little Words, they performed "I Wanna Be Loved by You" as vaudeville players Dan Healy and Helen Kane, with Reynolds dubbed by Kane. Their duet "Aba Daba Honeymoon" from Two Weeks with Love was the first soundtrack recording to become a top-of-the-chart gold record, reaching number three on the Billboard chart.

After 1953, Carpenter left films for stage, television, and radio work. He played Gilbert Burton, who receives $1,000,000 in a 1959 episode of The Millionaire, and co-starred with Ann Sothern in the 1954 TV production of Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark, which he also recorded for RCA Victor Records. In 1957, he played George "Tecumseh" McGuire on Men of Annapolis. In 1963, he was defendant Peter Brent in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Lover's Leap".

He returned to film in 1959 for Up Periscope for Warner Brothers, and later appeared in the independent films Cauliflower Cupids (1970) and Some of My Best Friends Are... (1971) as the character "Miss Untouchable". His later stage appearances included Hello, Dolly! opposite Mary Martin (which toured Vietnam during the war and was filmed as a one-hour NBC-TV special), The Boys in the Band, Dylan, Crazy For You, and the City Center revival of Kander and Ebb's 70, Girls, 70. He was still working occasionally as a stage actor in 2015.

Did You Know?

• He wrote the words and melody of the song "Can We Forget" in 1943.
• Carpenter was a successful mystery novelist in the 1970s and 1980s, with books including Deadhead, Games Murderers Play, and Cat Got Your Tongue?.
• In 2012, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Hollywood film organization Cinecon, presented in person by his former co-star Debbie Reynolds.