Carleton Carpenter, the actor, singer and MGM contract player who partnered with Debbie Reynolds to perform the hit song “Aba Daba Honeymoon” in the romantic musical Two Weeks With Love, has died. He was 95.
Carpenter died Monday of natural causes at his home in Warwick, New York, his friend Alan Eichler announced.
After starring on Broadway opposite the likes of Angela Lansbury, Ray Bolger and Hermione Gingold, the lanky Carpenter was signed by MGM, which quickly assigned him to Summer Stock (1950), starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland.
Garland caused so many delays and Carpenter was able to squeeze in work in Father of the Bride (1950), playing one of Elizabeth Taylor’s suitors, and Three Little Words (1950), in which he was first paired with Reynolds. (She mouthed the words to “I Want to Be Loved by You” alongside him in that.)
On the strength of that number, he and the equally cute Reynolds were tasked with reviving the vaudeville tune “Aba Daba Honeymoon” for Two Weeks With Love (1950), and the pair stole the spotlight from the toplined Jane Powell and Ricardo Montalban.
The soundtrack to their song was released as a single, the first time that had been done, and it sold more than 1 million copies while reaching No. 3 on the Billboard chart. He and Reynolds put together an act and toured the Loews theater circuit at the Capitol in New York and around the country.
(Their clips from Three Little Words and Two Weeks With Love were used in the 1974 film That’s Entertainment, which celebrated MGM’s 50th anniversary.)
The 6-foot-3 Carpenter then starred as Harley “Tumbleweeds” Williams in Sky Full of Moon opposite Jan Sterling — playwright William Inge claimed that movie was his inspiration for Bus Stop — and as the real-life soldier who brought his pet lion into the Army with him in Stanley Donen‘s Fearless Fagan, both released in 1952.
Carpenter also appeared with Burt Lancaster in Vengeance Valley (1951), with Dorothy Gish in Robert Siodmak’s The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951), with Richard Widmark in Richard Brooks’ Take the High Ground! (1953) and with James Garner in Up Periscope (1959).
Carleton Upham Carpenter Jr. was born on July 10, 1926, in Bennington, Vermont. While still a student at Bennington High School in 1944, he landed a role on Broadway in David Merrick’s first production, Bright Boy.
Later, he served as a Seabee in the U.S. Navy, helping to build the airstrip from which the Enola Gay took off for its 1945 flight to Hiroshima during World War II.
After the service, he followed with Broadway roles in 1946’s Three to Make Ready with Bolger, 1953-54’s John Murray Anderson’s Almanac with Gingold and 1957’s Hotel Paradiso with Bert Lahr and, in her Broadway debut, Lansbury. (The producers elevated his name above the title alongside Lahr and Lansbury soon after the comedy opened.)
Carpenter had made his film debut in producer Louis de Rochemont’s controversial Lost Boundaries (1949), about a Black family who pass for white.
He returned to New York at the end of his MGM contract to appear in Almanac and played Cornelius in the Mary Martin company of Hello, Dolly!, which toured throughout the U.S. and Far East, including entertaining troops in Vietnam at the height of the war.
Carpenter also performed in hundreds of radio and TV shows; in 1946, he was a regular on NBC’s Campus Hoopla.
He starred opposite Ann Sothern in the 1954 Max Liebman TV movie Lady in the Dark, and they recorded the score for RCA Victor. He also played the title role in Sidney Lumet’s 1955 production of George Kelly’s The Show-Off and co-starred with Shirley Temple in a musical version of Mother Goose for her Shirley Temple Storybook series in 1958.
His other TV appearances included Perry Mason, Father Knows Best, Goodyear Playhouse, General Electric Theater, The Millionaire, The Rifleman and his own series, 1955’s Luke and the Tenderfoot.
His last Broadway appearance came in the ’90s Gershwin musical Crazy for You, in which he also toured across the country, and his final New York appearance came in the 2006 City Center Encores revival of 70, Girls, 70.
Carpenter wrote seven mystery novels — Games Murderers Play, Deadhead, Cat Got Your Tongue?, Only Her Hairdresser Knew, Sleight of Deadly Hand, The Peabody Experience and Stumped — in the 1970s and ’80s and had stories published in Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and Ellery Queen Magazine.
He also wrote songs included the holiday perennial “Christmas Eve,” recorded by Billy Eckstine, “Cabin in the Woods,” and “Ev’ry Other Day,” which he performed for MGM Records.
His memoir, The Absolute Joy of Work, was published in 2016.
Survivors include his nieces, Lesley Phelps and Mrs. Michael Hall Axt, and cousins including Barbara Gallett.
Source: Hollywood
