Carroll was born in Manhattan and raised in Forest Hills, a heavily-Jewish community
in New York City's borough of Queens. After graduating from high school in 1942, he
joined the Merchant Marines and worked on ships in the Atlantic. In 1946, he enrolled
at the University of Montana to study English; while there he became interested in
theater. During one of the amateur productions, he met Nancy Fields; they married in
1951. He moved to Ireland where he continued his theatrical studies at the National
University of Ireland. He was discovered during one of his college productions and was
signed to appear at the Dublin Gate Theater. He worked in theater in Europe until 1954,
when he returned to New York City. His attempts to land on Broadway failed, and he
taught high school until 1958, when he finally landed an Off-Broadway production,
"Ulysses in Nighttown". He followed that with a Broadway production that was directed
by [[Burgess Meredith]], "God and Kate Murphy", in which he was both an understudy and
an assistant stage manager. At the same time, he was getting attention on TV. He worked
in a great many character roles throughout the 1960s. A pilot for "Those Were The Days",
based on the English hit "Till Death Us Do Part", was first shot in 1968 but was rejected by
the networks. In 1971 it was re-cast and re-shot at Es bleibt in der Familie (1971) and the rest is history.
