:''This page is about the actor Harry Carey. For the baseball broadcaster with a similar name, see
Harry Caray.''
:''For the Japanese method of suicide known formally as
seppuku, see
Hara-kiri.''
'Harry Carey' (
January 16,
1878 –
September 21,
1947) was an
American actor and one of
silent film's earliest superstars.
Biography
Carey was born 'Henry DeWitt Carey II' in
The Bronx, New York, the son of Ella J. Ludlum and Henry DeWitt Carey,
[1] a prominent lawyer and judge. He attended
Hamilton Military Academy then studied law at
New York University. After a boating accident which led to pneumonia, Carey wrote a play while recuperating and toured the country in it for three years, earning a great deal of money, all of which evaporated after his next play was a failure. In 1911, his friend
Henry B. Walthall introduced him to director
D.W. Griffith, for whom Carey was to make many films.
Although Carey, one of Hollywood's finest
character actors of the sound era, received an
Oscar nomination for his role as the President of the Senate in the 1939 film, ''
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'', he is best remembered as one of the first stars of the
Western film genre. He married at least twice and perhaps a third time (census records for 1910 indicate he had a wife named Clare E. Carey, and some references state that he was also married to actress
Fern Foster). His last marriage was to actress
Olive Fuller Golden (1896-1988). They purchased a large ranch in
Saugus, California, north of
Los Angeles. Their son,
Harry Carey, Jr. would become a character actor, also most famous for his roles in Westerns. Father and son both appeared (albeit in different scenes) in the 1948 film, ''
Red River'', which was filmed late in 1946 and went unreleased for almost two years.
Carey made his
Broadway stage debut in 1940.
A smoker, Harry Carey died in 1947 from a combination of
lung cancer,
emphysema and
coronary thrombosis, at the age of 69. He was interred in
Woodlawn Cemetery in the family mausoleum in The Bronx, New York.
Honors and homages
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Harry Carey has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1521 Vine Street.
As an homage to him,
John Wayne held his right elbow with his left hand in the closing shot of ''The Searchers'', imitating a stance Carey himself often used in his films.
In 1976, he was inducted into the
Western Performers Hall of Fame at the
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Filmography
IMDB filmography - Harry Carey
See also
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Notable figures in Western films
Footnotes
1. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~battle/celeb/hcary.htm
External links
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Harry Carey's Photo & Gravesite