DeHaven started his career in vaudeville in 1896[1] and made his Broadway debut portraying multiple roles in the 1903 musical Whoop-Dee-Doo.

Other Broadway musicals he starred in included Miss Dolly Dollars (1905), The Queen of the Moulin Rouge (1908), Hanky Panky (1912), All Aboard (1913), and His Little Widows (1917).

A 1923 short Character Studies uses editing as DeHaven "transforms" himself into the spitting image of various major film stars of the era: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and 9-year-old Jackie Coogan.

In the 1959–60 season, he appeared four times in various roles, and his daughter Gloria once as Rosemary Blaker, in the episode "Love Affair" on the television series Johnny Ringo.

Carter DeHaven died in 1977 at age 90 and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California[4]