Jack Carter, the comedian and actor who was featured on Broadway, on television, and in films throughout his lengthy Hollywood career, died from respiratory failure at his Beverly Hills home on Sunday, just four days after his 93rd birthday.
The star was a leading actor on network television even in its beginnings. In 1948, Carter appeared in several shows on ABC and in 1950 NBC gave him his own series entitled “The Jack Carter Show.” Carter was in dozens of movies including “Horizontal Lieutenant,” “The Extraordinary Seaman,” “The Funny Farm,” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas,” and also frequently worked with other celebrities including Ed Sullivan, Alan King, George Burns, and
Bob Hope, according to The Associated Press.
As a comedian and actor, Carter was known for his unmeasurable wit.
"I work to win the audience. I see these other guys, and they just recite. The less you do, the less you offend, of course, and that's what they want on TV," he said in a 1963 interview, according to the AP.
“This was not a man to heckle,” Tony Belmont, president of the
National Comedy Hall of Fame, said, according to The New York Times. “He had a million retorts for anyone in the audience that was foolish enough to try and trade barbs with the master.”
“This guy was the machine gun of comedy — rat-a-tat-tat. And not just onstage. He’d go into the bank and say, ‘If I’m giving you $10,000, you should wait on line for me,’” Patt Cooper, a friend and fellow comedian, remembered.
Formerly Jack Chakrin, Carter was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922 to Jewish Russian immigrants. He was drafted during World War II but later returned home and in 1947 debuted on Broadway in “Call Me Mister.”
He continued to show up on television shows throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Carter has appeared on “Desperate Housewives,” “Parks and Recreation,” “New Girl,” and “Shameless.”
During his life Carter endured two divorces from ex-wives Paula Stewart and Joan Mann. Today, he leaves behind his wife, Roxanne Stone; children, Michael, Chase, and Wendy; and his two grandchildren, Jake and Ava.