Anthony Caruso was born in Frankfort, Indiana, the son of Italian immigrants Anthony Bagarelli Caruso and Augustina Taormina Caruso. When he was ten years old, Anthony and his family moved to Long Beach, California, where he grew up. While acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, he met Alan Ladd, beginning a friendship that continued as they made 11 films together.
He made his film debut in Johnny Apollo (1940). In some of his television roles, Caruso played sympathetic characters, like “Ash”, on an early episode of CBS’s Gunsmoke.
In 1954, Caruso played Tiburcio Vásquez in an episode of the western series Stories of the Century. He appeared in the first Brian Keith series, Crusader. Among Caruso’s other Western credits was 1954’s Cattle Queen of Montana. In 1957, he appeared in the fourth episode of the first season of the TV western, Have Gun – Will Travel titled “The Winchester Quarantine”.
In 1956 Caruso appeared as Disalin with war hero Audie Murphy, Charles Drake and Anne Bancroft in Walk the Proud Land. In 1957, Caruso appeared in episode “The Child” of NBC’s The Restless Gun. In 1959, he was cast as George Bradley in the episode “Annie’s Old Beau” on the NBC children’s western series, Buckskin.
Some of his more memorable roles were that of the alien gangster “Bela Oxmyx” in the classic Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action”, Chief Blackfish on the NBC series Daniel Boone, Mongo in the film Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, Sengo in Tarzan and the Slave Girl, and Louis Ciavelli (the “box man” or safecracker) in The Asphalt Jungle. Caruso played the comical character of the Native American “Red Cloud” on the 1965 Get Smart episode “Washington 4, Indians 3”.
Caruso died three days before his 87th birthday in Brentwood in Los Angeles, California.