Roger Carmel starred as milksop Roger Buell in the 1967 NBC sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, but was replaced by Richard Deacon after season 1. Officially, Carmel had a salary dispute with producer Desi Arnaz, although, according to rumors, he was fired because his drug use interfered with production. Carmel’s other guest roles included the accountant Doug Wesley on CBS’s The Dick Van Dyke Show and Colonel Gumm on ABC’s Batman. He also appeared in roles on The Patty Duke Show, I Spy, Blue Light, The Everglades, Hogan’s Heroes, Car 54, Where Are You?, Banacek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, The High Chaparral, All in the Family, and The San Pedro Beach Bums. He was a regular contestant on Pantomime Quiz, also known as Stump the Stars. His film roles included Gambit, Myra Breckinridge, Breezy, Thunder and Lightning, and Jerry Lewis’s comeback film Hardly Working. Later in his career, Carmel was a frequent voice actor. He voiced Smokey Bear in fire safety advertisements and Decepticon deputy leader Cyclonus, among others, in the second and third seasons of the popular Transformers animated series. In the television commercials for the Naugles chain of Mexican fast-food restaurants, he played the character of Señor Naugles.

Roger Carmel died in Hollywood, of hypertensive cardiomyopathy in 1986. He was interred in New Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, New York. According to a letter column in the first volume of the monthly DC Comics Star Trek comic book, it was reported that Carmel was slated to reprise his role as Harry Mudd in a first-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but died before filming could commence. The storyline would have involved Mudd being discovered cryogenically frozen by the crew of the Enterprise-D in the 24th Century, and heroically sacrificing himself at the end of the episode. After Carmel’s death, Jack Angel took over his role as Cyclonus in The Transformers.