Harry Carey specialized in westerns. His film career began in 1909 during the nickelodeon era. Over the next twenty years, Carey made dozens of silent westerns, both shorts and features. During the transition from silent to talkie films, Carey’s future as a film actor was in doubt, but his first talkie, Trader Horn (1931), revealed a solid, dependable actor whose voice and delivery matched his friendly face, and Carey’s film career, in both westerns and other genres, was revitalized and continued for another twenty years.
Early Life
Accounts of life in the west, in the form of books and stage plays, were popular among easterners in the late 19th century. Harry Carey, born in New York in 1878, was interested in western stories from an early age. He began his acting career with small stock companies. Pneumonia layed him up sometime around 1900, and he used the time to write a melodrama, Montana, although he had never been to the west. From 1902 to 1904, Carey toured in his play. A second play was unsuccessful.
Silent Films, 1909-1928
Carey joined the Biograph Company in 1909. Appropriately, his first film, Bill Sharkey’s Last Game (1909), directed by D. W. Griffith, was a western. During five years with Biograph, Carey appeared in dozens of one- and two-reel short films, most of them directed by Griffith. He was not a major actor in the Biograph stock company, typically playing smaller roles than the more prominent actors, such as Henry B. Walthall or Robert Harron. Carey’s notable films at Biograph include An Unseen Enemy (1912), the debut of Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), Griffith’s pioneering examination of inner city gangsters.
In 1914, Carey starred in two films for the small Progressive Motion Picture Company: The Master Cracksman (now lost) and McVeagh of the South Seas, for which he was also writer, director and producer.
Carey moved west, to Hollywood, with Biograph in 1911. His career as a western star began after he joined the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1915. Most of his initial films at Universal were shorts. He first played a character named Cheyenne Harry in a 1916 feature, A Knight of the Range. A pretty twenty-year-old, Olive Fuller Gordon, Carey’s future wife, and Hoot Gibson were his co-stars. Also in 1916, Carey starred in the first film version of Three Godfathers, directed by Edward LeSaint and based on a 1913 novel by Peter B. Kyne. The novel was adapted subsequently to several films. Carey and John Ford produced a 1919 version, Marked Men. Under the original title are a 1930 version with Charles Bickford, a 1936 version with Chester Morris, and a 1948 John Ford version, dedicated to Carey's memory, with John Wayne and Harry Carey, Jr.
Carey’s first film with John Ford (then using Jack
rather than John
)
was Soul Herder (1917), a three-reel short and Ford’s fourth
directorial credit. Hoot Gibson is also in the cast.
Straight Shooting, the first feature made by Ford and Carey, was
followed by 21 more westerns made by the pair through 1921. Carey appears in most
of these films as Cheyenne Harry
. Although the name was the same, the
character in each film was distinct. Carey’s final silent with Ford was
Desperate Trails (1921). Unfortunately, most of the Ford-Carey
silents are lost films. The intact survivors, including
Bucking Broadway (1917) and Hell Bent (1918), feature
Carey as Cheyenne Harry.
With his plain features and unadorned costumes, Carey appears the common movie cowboy. He is distinguished by his forceful persona, intense gaze, and individualized mannerisms.
Carey left Universal in 1922, shortly after Ford moved to Fox Films. Through the 1920s Carey continued to star in westerns, mostly low budget films made by newly formed production companies, including Robertson-Cole Pictures Corporation and Hunt Stromberg Productions. Producer Hunt Stromberg, who had been an associate of Thomas Ince, formed his own production company in 1921. Stromberg produced eleven westerns starring Carey in 1924 and 1925. Carey also made four westerns with Charles Rogers Productions in 1926.
Tom Mix was the leading cowboy star of the 1920s. Mix was as much a showman as a cowboy. He wore flashy western outfits including a large, white stetson. His films featured extensive horseback riding and daring stunts (usually performed by Mix himself). More modest westerners, including Carey, remained popular with fans of westerns, but their films were small scale compared to the showiness of Mix.
During 1927, audience interest in westerns declined significantly, and even attendence at Tom Mix films decreased. Variety reported that urban theaters were not showing westerns except for Saturday and Sunday matinees. With fewer westerns being made, western stars, including Carey, were no longer heading their own production units. For Carey, 1927 and 1928 was a period of relative inactivity. He made two westerns with Charles Rogers Productions in 1928. He played supporting roles in a few non-westerns made by MGM, two with comedian William Haines (A Little Journey and Slide, Kelly, Slide) in 1927, and the villain in The Trail of ’98 (1928), set during the Klondike Gold Rush. As Jack Locasto, with his hair blackened, a small black moustache, and a perpetual scowl, he played a character at odds with his established screen persona and unlike any role he played before or after. The highlight of the movie is the gruesome and spectacular death of this evil character.
Talkies, 1931-1947
For the two years when his film career was inactive, Carey toured in vaudeville, doing western sketches. Rejuvenation came in 1929 when he signed with MGM to play the title character in Trader Horn, based on a 1927 book of the same name by Alfred Aloysius Horn, about the author’s adventures on safari in Africa. The Trader Horn troupe sailed on the Isle De France in early 1929, bound for Africa. Location shooting was arduous; accidents, swarms of biting insects, and sickness delayed filming. Originally, the films was intended to be a silent, and the troupe had been filming for a few months when the studio sent a sound crew. Recording sound on location only added to the difficulty, and the poorly recorded dialogue had to be re-recorded at the studio. The film was finally released two years after the crew had sailed for Africa. A box office winner, Trader Horn was nominated for Best Picture at the 1931 Academy Awards.
Despite the success of Trader Horn, Carey did not receive a contract from MGM, but he found plenty of work. Past fifty, his screen persona combining qualities of dependability, amiability, and toughness, he alternated between starring roles in low budget westerns and character parts in major and minor productions.
Carey starred in westerns made by Supreme Feature Film Company, Artclass Studios,
and William Berke Productions. He was a supporting actor in three of the
Zane Grey films made by Paramount starring Randolph Scott, portraying the
villain in Sunset Pass (1933). In 1935, Carey starred in
Powdersmoke Range, advertised by RKO as the
Barnum and Bailey of Westerns.
The cast list of this all star
(B
western stars) film included Hoot Gibson, Bob Steele, Guinn
Big Boy
Williams, Tom Tyler, William Farnum, and other westerners from the
silent era. In 1936, Carey appeared as Cheyenne Harry
for the last time in
Aces Wild and Ghost Town for William Berke Productions.
In The Last Outlaw, released by RKO in 1936, Carey plays a bank robber released after 25 years in prison who has difficulty adjusting to the bustling modern city. The film is a remake of a John Ford silent of 1919. Ford’s hope to make another version starring Carey was never realized.
During the 1930s, Carey had supporting roles in several excellent productions. In
Law and Order (1932), the first sound film to recreate
the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,
Carey plays a character based on Doc
Holliday to Walter Huston’s Wyatt Earp-style lawman. In
The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), his only sound film with
director John Ford, Carey played the Commandant of Fort Jefferson where Dr. Samuel
Mudd (Warner Baxter), convicted of aiding John Wilkes Booth, was imprisoned. Carey
supported Edward G. Robinson in two films, Howard Hawks'
Barbary Coast (1935) and Michael Curtiz's
Kid Galahad (1937).
In Mr. Smith Goes to Washinton (1939), Frank Capra cast Carey as the President of the Senate. For his outstanding performance, Carey was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for 1939, losing to Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach.
His success in Mr. Smith may have raised Carey’s profile in Hollywood. In his final decade he appeared prominately in many notable films including They Knew What They Wanted (1940), The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), Duel in the Sun (1946), Angel and the Badman (1947), and the Howard Hawks films Air Force (1943) and Red River (1948). Harry Carey Jr. is also in Red River but does not share any scenes with his father.
Harry Carey’s last film was So Dear to My Heart (1948), wherein his aura of authority and innate kindliness are utilized in his role of a county fair judge who awards the championship ribbon to a ram lamb with superior breeding but presents Bobby Driscoll and his beloved black lamb, Danny, a special Ribbon for Merit, for doing the best he could with what he had.
Personal Life
Harry Carey was born Henry DeWill Carey II in the Bronx, New York City, New York, in 1878. He was interested in western stories from an early age. He briefly studied law, but gave it up for acting with a small stock company. Pneumonia layed him up about 1900, and he used the time to write a melodrama, Montana, with which he toured for three years. His attempt to repeat the success with a second play failed.
He began working for the Biograph Company at its Fort Lee Studios, New Jersey in 1908 and moved to California with the company in 1911. He may have been making films in the Santa Clara River area by 1913. The pretty valley north of Los Angeles was mostly uninhabited at the time. In 1916, Carey homesteaded a ranch along the river near the small town of Newhall. Cattle and horses grazed on his 3,000-acre property.
Carey had been twice married when he met pretty young actress Olive Fuller Golden at Universal Studios. She was his leading lady in Knight of the Range (1916). They were married in 1920, and Olive retired. They made their home on the ranch. They had two children: Harry Carey Jr., born in 1921, and a daughter, Ella, born in 1923.
In the mid-1920s, Olive and Harry added a tourist attraction to the ranch. They built a trading post and stocked it with Native American articles. They hired a band of Navajo to work at the ranch and make items for the trading post, including blankets and jewelry. The Navajo performed Indian Medicine Dances and put on tableau at the ranch and at venues around the Los Angeles Area.
The trading post venture, and nearly the entire ranch itself, came to a shocking end on March 12, 1928. The St. Francis Dam on the Santa Clara River, a few miles upriver from the Carey Ranch, broke suddenly, flooding the river canyon as the water raced downstream. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people. The trading post and the caretaker’s house were destroyed. The Carey family was in New York and the Navajo had returned to their reservation, but the caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Harter, were lost. The house and other ranch buildings stood on higher ground and were safely above the flood. The Carey family lived in Los Angeles for several years before returning to their ranch. The trading post was not rebuilt.
Carey’s popularity declined as audienes gradually lost interest in westerns. From 1927 to 1931, he was either in standard productions or not on the screen. The concurrent transition from silent to talking films was an additional disruption to his career, as it was for many actors. Carey, who had made live appearances throughout his career, was performing a vaudeville western act with his sister-in-law, Ruth Golden, during 1928, and by February of that year he was considering quitting the motion picture business. He was planning a tour in England with the western act and considered selling the ranch. The dam disaster and resultant destruction of his property may have changed his mind about selling.
His acting career was rejuvenated in 1929 when Carey signed a contract with MGM to make Trader Horn on location in Aftrica. Olive Carey was with him in the cast. This project occupied him for several years, and by the early 1930s, B-level westerns had recovered popularity, and Carey, despite his advancing age, continued to star in them. He also had supporting roles in higher budget features. Carey continued successfully in movies until his death in 1947 at age 69. His final film, So Dear To My Heart, was released postumously in 1948.
Carey’s greater prominence in the early 1940s may have led to starring roles in three productions on Broadway: Heavenly Express (1940), with John Garfield and Aline MacMahon, the Eugene O”Neill comedy Ah Wilderness (1941), produced by the Theater Guild, and But Not Goodbye (1944).
Career Consideration
Harry Carey had plain features, a distinctive gravely voice, and an easygoing manner. During the silent era he played westerners almost exclusively. His roles expanded during the talking era to include contemporary characters. In a forty-year career, except for a couple of characterizations, his screen persona was of a modest, likeable individual, authoritative, trustworthy, and rock solid.
The title sequence of the John Ford's Three Godfathers (1948), starring John Wayne, contains this dedication: To the memory of HARRY CAREY, Bright Star of the early western sky…
In the background a horseman, his clothes and hat the same as Carey wore, rides up a slope, stops, rises slightly in his saddle, takes off his hat and rubs his head, before sitting back with a hand on the horse behind the saddle.
Further Reading