Carla Tortelli

Carla Maria Victoria Angelina Teresa Apollonia Lozupone Tortelli LeBec, commonly known as Carla Tortelli, is a fictional character in the American television show Cheers, portrayed by Rhea Perlman. Outwardly, at least, Carla is a mean-spirited woman who expresses disdain for many (perhaps even most) people. She had four children with her then-husband Nick when the series started and eight children with three different men when it ended.

Carla Tortelli
Cheers character
Rhea Perlman from "The Tortelli Tort" (episode 3, 1982)
First appearance"Give Me a Ring Sometime" (episode 1.01)
Last appearance"Cheerful Goodbyes" (Frasier episode 9.21)
Portrayed byRhea Perlman
In-universe information
Alias
  • Carla Maria Victoria Angelina Teresa Apollonia Lozupone Tortelli LeBec
  • Carla LeBec
  • Carla Lozupone
GenderFemale
OccupationWaitress
Family
  • Benito Lozupone (father)
  • Mrs. Lozupone, née Mussolini (mother)
  • Annette Lozupone (sister)
  • Angelique (sister)
  • Sal Lozupone (brother)
  • Unnamed brother
SpouseNick Tortelli (divorced)
Eddie LeBec (widowed)
Significant other
Children
RelativesFrankie (nephew)
Annie Tortelli (daughter-in-law)
Pat McDougall (son-in-law)
Antonio Lozupone (grandfather)
Paolo (uncle)
Santo Cabone (cousin)
Amerigo (great-uncle)
Sophia (great-aunt)
Unnamed grandchild
ReligionRoman Catholicism
NationalityAmerican

Carla appeared in all 271 episodes of Cheers in 1982–1993 and guest-starred in "Cheerful Goodbyes", an episode of the spin-off Frasier. She has also appeared in "Cheers", an episode of St. Elsewhere; "Fear of Flying", an episode of The Simpsons,[1] and the pilot episode of the short-lived spinoff The Tortellis. Along with Sam Malone and Norm Peterson, she is one of only three characters to appear in every episode of Cheers.

Casting
Perlman at the 1988 Primetime Emmy Awards

According to an interview with Ted Danson, Perlman was the first person of all actors to be hired as part of a cast ensemble[2] and then was cast as Carla Tortelli, "a wisecracking, cynical waitress".[3] Before she starred as Carla, she worked once as a waitress in a New York City restaurant, serving meals like spaghetti and fish.[4] Also, she was trained in the Bull & Finch Pub (now called Cheers Beacon Hill) by a waitress to prepare her character.[5][6] Perlman previously appeared as Louie DePalma's (Danny DeVito) sweet and kind girlfriend, in contrast to tomboy Carla, on Taxi.[7]

I think Carla's a lot of things I'd like to be. I'm not like her, but she's a person who's always got a wisecrack. I always think of something two hours later. But we're both earthy and practical. We're survivors. The character is well-written, but you always put a lot of yourself into it.[4]

— Rhea Perlman, The Associate Press, April 1983

Role

When the show premiered in 1982, "feisty",[8] "worldly-wise",[9] Catholic-raised, and highly superstitious waitress Carla Tortelli has four children to support, fathered by her ex-husband Nick Tortelli (Dan Hedaya): Anthony (Timothy Williams), Serafina (Leah Remini), Gino (Josh Lozoff), and Anne Marie (Risa Littman). During marriage, he was a deadbeat father and disloyal, unfaithful husband to Carla by cheating on her with other women. Over time, she gives birth to four more children: Lucia (Sabrina Wiener) fathered by Nick;[p 1] Ludlow, nicknamed Lud (Jarrett Lennon), by Frasier's mentor Dr. Bennett Ludlow (James Karen);[p 2] and twins Elvis (Danny Kramer) and Jesse (Thomas Tulak) by Eddie Lebec (Jay Thomas), a then-ice hockey player who later becomes an ice show performer. All children but one turn out to be unruly, rotten, and spoiled. They defy whoever is substituting for their mother Carla, including babysitters.

Carla has siblings, including two sisters (younger Annette (also played by Perlman)[p 3] and Angeline) and two brothers (including Sal).[p 4] Six of her siblings are older.[p 5] In "The Cranemakers" (1989), according to Whitney Norris (James R. Winker), representative of the estate of Carla's late grandfather, Antonio Lozuponi, Antonio deserted his wife in 1921, moved to Los Angeles with just his "lucky quarter", and made fortune selling peach and oil products. Feeling bad about leaving his family behind, he gave his surviving legitimate family a will of $20 million, suppressed by his illegitimate son, Paolo, who "squandered the entire fortune on fast horses and loose women." The will was not discovered until Paolo's death in the previous month. Norris delivers just Antonio's "lucky quarter" to Carla, devastating her.[p 6] She also has a nephew Frankie, to whom Lilith and Rebecca are attracted while he works as a temporary bartender for one time.[p 7]

As a waitress, she is more experienced than her nemesis Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), who has a nice personality and upper-class traits, contrary to Carla, who treats regular customers with disdain and mostly negative sarcasm, including Cliff Clavin, a know-it-all bar patron. A devoted and often-disappointed Boston Red Sox fan,[p 8] she became friends with Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Coach Ernie Pantusso (Nicholas Colasanto) during Sam's baseball days at least five years before the show started[p 9] and came to work for him at Cheers when Sam retired from baseball and bought the bar.

In two-part episode "Never Love a Goalie" (1987), Carla briefly dates the Boston Bruins ice hockey player, Guy "Eddie" LeBec, who has an endless winning streak and a French Canadian background. As a result, Eddie's winning streak ends abruptly. Since both are superstitious, they promise to break up repeatedly before every game to avoid the "curse". In "Home Is the Sailor", Carla is revealed to be several months pregnant with Eddie's twins (incorporated by another of Perlman's pregnancies[10]), so she and Eddie wed in "Little Carla, Happy at Last: Part 2". Also, in the episode, the Bruins replaces him with a younger player, and he could not find another team. In "Airport V" (1988), Eddie becomes a penguin mascot for a traveling ice show in another state. In "Tale of Two Cuties", Carla gives birth to their twin boys, named Elvis and Jesse.

In "Death Takes a Holiday on Ice" (1989), Eddie was killed by an ice resurfacer when he saved the life of another member of the ice show. At the funeral, it was revealed that he had concurrently another wife Gloria with twins, as well. Carla changes her surname back to Tortelli to avoid being confused with the other "Mrs. LeBec". The demise of Jay Thomas's character Eddie LeBec has been claimed to stem from Thomas's comments "about" Perlman in a radio show. However, Thomas denied this and declared that he was referring only to the Carla character.[11] Despite Ken Levine's praise on Thomas's acting and pairing of Eddie and Carla,[12] Eddie was written out of the show because Perlman thought that the pairing would make her "not part of the people in the bar."[11]

In "Head Over Hill" (1991), Carla tries to pull a vengeance on John Allen Hill (Keene Curtis), Sam's upper-class rival, owner of the restaurant Melville's, and co-owner of Cheers, on Sam's behalf. However, she ironically ends up sleeping with him. Since then, she has on-and-off sexual encounters with John. In "Feelings... Whoa, Whoa, Whoa" (1992), she comes into terms of her feelings for John, but she and John find each other incompatible except in bed.

In her only episode of Frasier, "Cheerful Goodbyes" (2002), according to her, two of Carla's sons are imprisoned and her house is on the verge of foreclosing. She is relieved that Cliff will be retiring into Florida. However, in his retirement party, influenced by his friends' farewell comments - including a vicious tirade by Carla which he mistakes as a sarcastic tribute - Cliff decides to stay in Boston, much to her dismay. She attempts to attack him with a harpoon but is restrained by others.

Reception
Carla says something really crass and stupid here, and we move on before the audience hates her.[13]

—David Lloyd

Carla Tortelli was voted a favorite character by eight percent of 1,011 people, who were surveyed in 1993 by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press (now Pew Research Center).[14] She was ranked No. 66 out of Bravo's The 100 Greatest TV Characters of all-time.[15] Steve Craig of the University of North Texas noted that she "lacks the charm, warmth, and demureness of the feminine ideal" and is a ridicule of anti-feminism for her "un-ladylike" promiscuity.[16] Bill Simmons, previously of ESPN, praised her in episodes that do not mainly focus on her.[17]

Heather Hundley noted that the series sends a "double standards" about men and women, involved in promiscuity. She noted that the series portrays Sam Malone as heroic, who never suffers from negative consequences of his promiscuity,[18] while it portrays Carla as "nymphomaniac",[19] who regrets her own promiscuities for out-of-wedlock pregnancies and wrong lovers.[20] She finds the series's portrayal of premarital sex "negative and unhealthy", especially for omitting other dangers of promiscuity, like sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.[20]

Rhea Perlman won Emmy Awards as an Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1989 for her portrayal of Carla.[21] She was honored as the Best Supporting Actress (Comedy) by Viewers for Quality Television in 1985[22] and the "Funniest Supporting Actress" by the American Comedy Awards in 1989.[23] Simon Cocks from Television Addiction website called her "the show's weak link" and was "irritated [by] her [a]nd her constant insensitive and unfunny remarks[.]"[24]

References
  • Bjorklund, Dennis A (September 1, 2014). Cheers TV Show: A Comprehensive Reference (e-Book ed.). Praetorian Publishing. ISBN 9780967985237.
  • Hundley, Heather (2005). "Sex, Society, and Double Standards in Cheers". In Winn, J. Emmett; Brinson, Susan L (eds.). Transmitting the Past: Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Broadcasting. The University of Alabama Press. pp. 205+. ISBN 978-0-8173-1453-8.

From primary sources:

  1. "Father Knows Last", season 1
  2. "Whodunit?", season 3
  3. "Little Sister Don't Cha", season 2
  4. "Honor Thy Mother", season 10
  5. "The Tortelli Tort," Season 1
  6. "The Cranemakers", season 7
  7. "Get Your Kicks On Route 666", season 10
  8. "The Tortelli Tort", season 1
  9. "Truce or Consequences", season 1

From non-primary sources:

  1. Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). "Fear of Flying". BBC. Retrieved August 19, 2010.
  2. Danson, Ted (2003). "Setting the Bar: A Conversation with Ted Danson". Cheers: The Complete First Season (DVD). Paramount Pictures.
  3. Scott, Vernon. "Series Producers Working Now to Get `Cheers'." Telegraph Herald [Dubuque, Iowa] 11 July 1982: 20. Google News. Web. 05 April 2012.
  4. Buck, Jerry (April 24, 1983). "Rhea Perlman Mixes Real Life with Series". The Press-Courier. Oxnard, California. TV Week, p. 7. Retrieved July 23, 2012, at Google News Archive. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  5. Kerr, Peter (November 29, 1983). "NBC COMEDY 'CHEERS' TURNS INTO A SUCCESS". The New York Times. Retrieved November 16, 2012.
  6. "Real Life Cheers Bartender Laid Off". CBS News. Associated Press. March 10, 2009. The waitress who trained Rhea Perlman was eventually fired for berating a customer for "leaving a $1 tip on a $100 bill".
  7. Raftery, Brian (October 2012). "The Best TV Show That's Ever Been". GQ. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
  8. "Cheers star unlucky". Ottawa Citizen. Associated Press. January 24, 1986. p. D15.
  9. Buck, Jerry (January 23, 1983). "Cheers provides tough education". The Modesto Bee. Associated Press. p. 3, TV Magazine. Retrieved August 24, 2012, at Google News Archive. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  10. "Cheers starts 6th season with new co-star". Fort Scott Tribune. Fort Scott, Kansas. August 17, 1987. p. 5.
  11. Raftery, Brian (October 2012). "The Best TV Show That's Ever Been". GQ.
  12. Levine, Ken (July 21, 2006). "The kiss of death for Eddie LeBec". ...by Ken Levine.
  13. "In memory of David Lloyd". ...by Ken Levine. November 11, 2009. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
  14. Mills, Kim I. "TV viewers glad Sam stayed single." The Sunday Gazette [Schenectady, NY] 2 May 1993: A3. Google News. Web. 21 January 2012. The margin of error in the survey was ±3, according to the polls. In this web edition, scroll down to see the title of the headline.
  15. "The 100 Greatest TV Characters." Bravo, 2004. Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Web. 10 February 2012. Archived from the original.
  16. Craig, Steve. "Selling Masculinities, Selling Femininities: Multiple Genders and the Economics of Television." The Mid-Atlantic Almanack 2 (1993): 15–27. Internet Archive Wayback Machine. 1–21. Web. January 14, 2011.
  17. Simmons, Bill (February 21, 2002). "Page 2: Dear Sports Guy..." ESPN. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved June 20, 2012.
  18. Hundley 2005, p. 219.
  19. Hundley 2005, p. 207.
  20. Hundley 2005, p. 218
  21. Bjorklund, pp. 458-459, 461.
  22. "The Ratings Game - CBS Eked Out a Win, but NBC Takes the Top Honors in the Quality Poll". The Seattle Times (4th ed.). The Associated Press; Knight Ridder. April 22, 1985. p. B1. Record no. 20902. The Cosby Show topped as the "Best Regular Series" in the survey of 36 critics.
  23. "Lifetime American Comedy Awards to Hepburn, Skeleton". The Modesto Bee. Modesto, California. Associated Press. May 24, 1989. p. D3.
  24. Cocks, Simon (August 8, 2012). "TV Review: Cheers – Seasons 6 to 11". Television Addiction.
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