CARLETON CARPENTER: ALL-AMERICAN INNOCENCE

Classic Images
Issue Number 506
August 2017

“I was truly mortified! Watching yourself on the big screen for the first time can be a huge jolt … like hearing yourself on radio for the first time. It just doesn’t seem like you.”

Tall, slim, light-haired CARLETON CARPENTER (1926-2022) first started out in the late 1940s playing dreamy-eyed young gents complete with a malleable mug and awkward innocence. Rex Reed once described him as “the boyish equivalent of an All-American Fourth of July picnic — wholesome, delightful and utterly without pretense.” Originally from the Broadway stage, he developed his buoyant bobbysoxer image with a breezy log of 15 films that included musicals, comedy and wartime drama, notably for MGM. Gracing hundreds of TV and radio shows during his heyday, Carlton later returned to musicals and went on to make a modest name for himself as a lightweight mystery writer.

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