Eventually Lillian took over the corporation entirely, and Hank died soon after. Because his father died when he was very young, Arthur Carlson was raised mostly by his mother and by her sarcastic butler, Hirsch (Ian Wolfe). Carlson served in the Marine Corps as an officer, presumably during the Korean War, however, this is never explicitly stated; he also makes reference to being at Guadalcanal, as well as learning some Japanese, which may be a vague indication that he served during World War II instead. He is explicitly referenced as being 48 in an episode aired in 1979, giving him a birth year of 1931 (or possibly 1930) making Korea a much more likely. At some point he saw combat, a fact he confirmed to Venus Flytrap. Mama Carlson has never shown Arthur any open signs of affection, and constantly puts him down: when he tries to hug her, she pushes him aside and says "keep away from me!" She admits to Andy Travis that she "pushed and bullied" her son this way because she was trying to make him tough and self-sufficient, like her; instead, by her own admission, the tactic backfired, making him even more weak-willed than his father. He is married to Carmen (Allyn Ann McLerie), a sweet-natured woman who is almost as shy as he is: though they are happily married, their main problem is that they are so anxious to avoid hurting each other's feelings that they rarely tell each other what they really think. They have a son, Arthur Jr., whom they sent off to military school on Mama Carlson's advice; this proved to be a mistake when it turns "Little Arthur" into a nasty, racist, borderline fascist. In the first season, Mr. Carlson takes his son out of military school, to live with his parents and go to public school, but later references suggest that Little Arthur gets worse, not better; in one episode, it is revealed that Little Arthur wants to join the American branch of the Nazi Party, and in another it's stated that he wants to join the PLO. During the course of the series, Carmen has a surprise pregnancy and, after she and Arthur decide they want the baby, she gives birth to a daughter, whom she and Arthur hope they can raise their own way, without the mistakes they made with their son. The girl's name is later revealed to be Melanie in a subsequent episode. In the episode "A Simple Little Wedding", it is revealed that Arthur and Carmen have been married for 25 years, and that they eloped when Mama Carlson began taking control of their wedding.