[3] Caruso's early acting experience included performing with The Hart Players, a stock theater company that presented tent shows.

He returned in 1963, playing the title character “Ash Farior”, in a performance outside of his normal roles, partnering with & befriending “Ben” (John Dehner), where the latter has an accident that disrupts his brain, and Caruso shows his friend sympathy, love, patience, care & loyalty.

In 1957, he appeared in the fourth episode of the first season of the TV Western Have Gun – Will Travel starring Richard Boone 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.

That same year, he portrayed Matt Cleary on CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive episode "The Littlest Client", with Steve McQueen.

In 1960, Caruso played a Cherokee Indian, Chief White Bull, in the episode "The Long Trail" of the NBC Western series, Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin.

Caruso guest-starred in an episode of the ABC Western series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, based on a Robert Lewis Taylor novel of the same name.

In 1964, he guest-starred in the Bonanza episode "The Saga of Squaw Charlie" playing a Native American man shunned by almost everybody and with only two friends, Ben Cartwright and a little girl named Angela.

Some of his other 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.