Bill Oppenheim writes:
I'm pretty sure Roger Carmel was fired from The Mothers-in-Law and died years later. It was a drug overdose?
Well, since this weblog seems to be in full Death Mode, I might as well answer this. Roger C. Carmel was one of the most prolific character actors of his day. He was on just about everything, often many times, but most folks remember him from his two appearances as the hedonist of space, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, on the original Star Trek. Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show remember him as Doug Wesley, the accountant who wouldn't give Buddy and Sally a raise because Alan Brady had invested too much money in Martin and Lewis coloring books. (And no, he never appeared in the Gold Key comic.) Anyway, Carmel was a co-star of a situation comedy called The Mothers-In-Law which was on NBC for two seasons beginning in 1967. The main stars, seen in the photo above, were Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard.
It was a pretty good TV show…the last series produced by Desi Arnaz. At the end of its first season, Carmel had a salary dispute with Señor Arnaz and took a hike — or at least, that was the official story. The rumor was that he was using drugs and causing delays in production. Desi gave him two weeks to clean up his act, he didn't and was terminated. I can't swear that's true but either way, he was replaced in the role by Richard Deacon.
Carmel died some time later…in 1986. One of his last jobs was doing the voice of a sinister crocodile on a cartoon special I wrote. He was a delightful man and I remember him telling us with childlike amazement that he was being paid a very nice fee to appear the following weekend at a Star Trek convention. The amazement was because he'd done hundreds of roles on different TV shows and in movies that were long forgotten…but those few days he'd worked on Star Trek two decades earlier were still earning him considerable fame and fortune. He'd been on Batman, I Spy, Hogan's Heroes, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Hawaii Five-O, and all those Universal westerns and detective shows, and no one (but for clowns like me) ever asked him about any of them. Star Trek, which at the time hadn't meant any more to him than any other job, was providing him with a tidy income.
There are only a few TV shows that still have that kind of commerce. There's no real money in having been on Bonanza or Mannix or That Girl, but every single actor who's alive and ever appeared on The Andy Griffith Show has been offered tons of money to go down South and sign autographs. There are annual Dark Shadows conventions and a series of Get Smart reunions are now being promoted. You wonder why certain shows and not others.
The Internet Movie Database lists the cause of death for Roger C. Carmel as suicide but as I recall, it was ruled an accidental drug overdose. Some friends found him at home in bed surrounded by cocaine paraphernalia. If you go to that link to look at his list of credits, by the way, I think the TV roles listed there represent about a tenth of all he did. A good actor.