A big man with a bigger moustache, Roger C. Carmel spent nearly thirty years being the loudest thing in other people's shows. Television used him well and often; the one film of his we have reviewed asks him only to be exasperated, which he does with skill.
Fi1m perspective
Carmel played men who talked too much and knew it. The handlebar moustache, the chest, the voice that assumed the room was already listening: he was cast again and again as the flamboyant supporting man, the con artist or the camp villain who turned up for one episode, took everything that was not nailed down, and left before anybody could stop him. He did not do small. He did not often do sincere. He did noise, and he did it with care.
He started on Broadway in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in The Power and the Glory (1958), Caligula (1960) and Purlie Victorious (1961), and in 1959 he stood, tall and uncredited, in a crowd in North by Northwest. Television found a use for him that film never quite did. The part people remember is Harcourt Fenton Mudd, the galactic con man, in two episodes of Star Trek (1966 and 1967) and once more in the animated series; a Mudd series of his own was discussed and never made. The same years gave him Colonel Gumm on Batman (1967) and a season as Roger Buell on The Mothers-in-Law (1967), which he left after the first year. After that the work was guest spots and supporting parts, and it stayed that way.
The films are thinner. There is a supporting role in Clint Eastwood's Breezy (1973), and there is Hardly Working (1980), where Jerry Lewis cast him as Robert Trent, the brother-in-law. We scored that film 45 and found it slack and sentimental, with a score that instructs us to pity Lewis before he has earned it. Carmel's job is to be exasperated, and he is good at it. We were grateful for him: for a few minutes at a time, somebody on screen is as fed up as we were, and his irritation is the nearest the film comes to a point of view. It is a small part. He does not try to make it a large one, which is to his credit and the film's loss.
The last phase was voice work, for cartoons and commercials: Cyclonus in The Transformers, Smokey Bear in the adverts, and the Quintesson Leader as well as Cyclonus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986), the year he died. It made sense. Take away the moustache and the chest and the voice was always the thing doing the work.
Start with Mudd, who is what he was for. Hardly Working is a smaller matter: one exasperated brother-in-law, played well, in a film that has no idea what to do with anybody.
Biography
Roger C. Carmel (1932–1986) was an American actor. He originated several roles on Broadway from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, including parts in Caligula (1960) and Purlie Victorious (1961). He appeared in numerous guest roles on television series including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Batman, Hogan's Heroes, The Munsters and Hawaii Five-O.
Carmel played Harcourt Fenton Mudd in two episodes of the original Star Trek (1966–1967) and starred as Roger Buell in the first season of the sitcom The Mothers-in-Law (1967). He appeared as Robert Trent in Jerry Lewis's film Hardly Working (1980) and provided voices for animated series including The Transformers (1984–1986).
