January 19, 2007

Ron Carey, Comic Actor, Dies at 71

By DENNIS HEVESI

Ron Carey, the pint-sized, round-faced comic best known as the unjustifiably cocky Police Officer Carl Levitt on the long-running television situation comedy “Barney Miller,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 71.



He died of a stroke at a hospital near his home, a nephew, Michael Ciccolini, said.

At 5-foot-4 and with traces of an inner-city New Joisey accent, Mr. Carey played a plainclothes cop constantly seeking a promotion by currying favor with his superiors.

“Barney Miller,” which ran from 1976 to 1982, starred Hal Linden as the captain of a New York City police precinct whose officers dealt with the zany characters who came, not always by choice, into the station house. Mr. Carey, as Officer Levitt, would inject unsolicited opinions on how to handle whoever was in the holding cell. Besides playing roles in other less successful sitcoms, Mr. Carey appeared in 15 movies, including “High Anxiety” in 1977 and “History of the World: Part I” in 1981, both with Mel Brooks.

In “High Anxiety,” a parody of Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, he played Brophy, the chauffeur and foil of Dr. Richard Thorndyke, the incoming administrator of the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. Mr. Carey’s running gag in that movie was to grab something heavy and say, “I got it! I got it! I got it!” Then, unable to lift it, he would squeak, “I ain’t got it.”

“History of the World” traces mankind’s evolution, or lack of it, from the dawn of time. Mr. Carey played Swiftus, the agent-manager for Mr. Brooks’s character, Comicus, a stand-up philosopher in ancient Rome.

Ronald Cicenia (Carey was his stage name) was born in Newark on Dec. 11, 1935, a son of John and Fanny Cicenia. Besides his brother James, of Roseland, N.J., he is survived by his wife of 38 years, the former Sharon Boyeronus.

Mr. Carey started doing standup comedy in New York. His break came in 1966 when he appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show.” He later appeared on “The Jackie Gleason Show,” Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.”

Much of Mr. Carey’s comedy reflected his upbringing as the undersized, quick-witted kid on the block. An Italian Catholic, he considered the priesthood at one time, his nephew said. That ambition was realized when he played Father Paglia in “Have Faith,” a sitcom about inner-city priests, which ran for half a season in 1989.