Born on October 28, 1885, in New York City, he began acting on the stage, eventually reaching Broadway in the comedy Every Thursday, in which he had one of the leading parts of Thomas Clark.

[1] Carleton appeared in several Broadway plays during the 1930s, including successful productions of Kill That Story, which ran for several months at the Booth Theatre in 1934,[2] and as the coroner in the original staging of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which ran from late 1935 to early 1936, starring Anne Wiggins Brown and Todd Duncan.

[3] Carleton made his film debut in the small un-credited role of the judge in 1939's Back Door to Heaven.

[7] Some notable films in which he appeared include: Michael Curtiz' classic Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman;[8] 1944's romantic comedy, Casanova Brown, starring Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright;[9] in Elia Kazan's film directorial debut, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), starring James Dunn (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), Dorothy McGuire, and Joan Blondell;[10] the 1946 film noir The Blue Dahlia, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake;[11] the 1946 Abbott and Costello comedy The Time of Their Lives;[12] the classic drama Two Years Before the Mast, starring Alan Ladd, Brian Donlevy, William Bendix, and Barry Fitzgerald;[13] the 1948 biopic about Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Words and Music, starring Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney;[14] and the 1949 comedy Once More, My Darling, starring Robert Montgomery and Ann Blyth.

[15] Carleton's final screen performance was in 1949's Malaya, starring Spencer Tracy, James Stewart and Valentina Cortesa.