Jack Carson

John Elmer Carson was born on October 27, 1910, in Carman, Manitoba, Canada, to Elmer and Elsa Carson. His father worked as an insurance company executive. Carson had an older brother, Robert Carson, who also became a character actor. In 1914, the family relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which Carson considered his hometown. He attended Hartford School and St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, before enrolling at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he developed an interest in acting. He became a United States citizen on June 6, 1949.

Standing six feet two inches tall and weighing 220 pounds, Carson made his first stage appearance in a collegiate production, cast as Hercules. During that performance he stumbled and brought down a portion of the set. His college friend Dave Willock found the mishap amusing enough to propose a vaudeville partnership, and the two formed a comedy act called Willock and Carson that performed at theaters across North America. After that partnership dissolved, Carson teamed with dancer Betty Alice Lindy for engagements on the Orpheum Circuit, and the two married in 1938, divorcing in 1939.

Radio provided Carson with steady work alongside his stage and vaudeville activities. In 1938, he appeared on the Kraft Music Hall during Bing Crosby's tenure as host. From 1942 to 1943 he hosted The Camel Comedy Caravan, and on June 2, 1943, he launched The New Jack Carson Show, which ran for four years and regularly broke audience records while attracting prominent Hollywood guest stars. He starred in The Sealtest Village Store during the 1947–1948 season. In 1949, his radio program toured with Marion Hutton and Robert Alda, with stops in Chicago and New York City. On February 8, 1960, Carson received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing his contributions to radio and television, located at 6361 Hollywood Boulevard and 1560 Vine Street respectively.

As vaudeville declined in the face of competition from radio and film, Carson and Willock pursued work in Hollywood. He began with small roles at RKO Radio Pictures, including an appearance in Bringing Up Baby in 1938. A more substantial early role came in the Universal Pictures anti-Nazi drama Enemy Agent, in which he played an undercover G-Man opposite Richard Cromwell. That performance led to contract status at Warner Bros., where he was frequently paired with Dennis Morgan in a series of light comedies designed to rival the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope Road to pictures at Paramount. Carson also worked at RKO and MGM, where he appeared opposite Myrna Loy and William Powell in Love Crazy in 1941. His comedic supporting work in films such as The Strawberry Blonde with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant, both released in the early 1940s, established him as a reliable presence in that genre.

Carson demonstrated his range in dramatic roles as well. He played the scheming Wally Fay opposite Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce in 1945, a performance widely regarded as among his finest. That same year he appeared in Roughly Speaking as Harold Pierson alongside Rosalind Russell. In 1950 he starred in the Columbia Pictures slapstick comedy The Good Humor Man, co-starring Lola Albright, whom he married in 1952. He received further critical recognition for his portrayal of publicist Matt Libby in A Star Is Born in 1954, and later played Cooper Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958. Doris Day, who worked with Carson at Warner Bros., credited him in her autobiography as one of her early Hollywood mentors.

Carson's television career began in 1950 when he became one of four rotating hosts on the comedy-variety program Four Star Revue, alongside Jimmy Durante, Ed Wynn, and Danny Thomas. The show was renamed All Star Revue in its second season, which was Carson's last with the program. He hosted his own variety series, The Jack Carson Show, from 1954 to 1955, and served as announcer on the television version of Strike It Rich. His television appearances continued into the early 1960s and included The Jane Wyman Show in 1955, Alcoa Theatre and Bonanza in 1959, Thriller in 1960, The Twilight Zone in 1961, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents on June 5, 1962. A television pilot he filmed, Kentucky Kid, in which he would have played a horse-raising veterinarian with an adopted Chinese child, was under consideration at NBC but was shelved after Carson fell ill. NBC later revived the concept as Kentucky Jones, with Dennis Weaver in the lead role.

Carson appeared on Broadway in 1952 in the musical Of Thee I Sing. He was married to Kay St. Germain from 1941 to 1950, to Lola Albright from 1952 to 1958, and from 1961 until his death to Sandra Jolley. On August 26, 1962, while rehearsing the play Critic's Choice in Andover, New Jersey, he collapsed on stage. Stomach cancer was subsequently diagnosed during an unrelated surgical procedure. Carson died on January 2, 1963, in Encino, California, at the age of 52, and was entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. In 1983 he was inducted posthumously into the Wisconsin Performing Artists Hall of Fame alongside Dennis Morgan.