1921-2012
Son of famed actor Harry Carey, Henry George Carey, was born on this day on a ranch in what is now Santa Clarita, California. Despite that he did not actually share a full legal name with his father, and that is father was a second himself, the young Henry would be dubbed and known from his first film appearance as "Harry Carey Jr." His mother as actress Olive Golden Carey, who was the daughter of vaudevillian and Broadway actor George Fuller Golden (hence Henry's middle name). The late date of his birth would seem to be a bit of a head-scratcher on a silent film blog, but like William Hopper, being the son of actors means that you might make your film premiere before you can even remember doing so. Such is the case here with the younger Carey, he made his film debut before he even turned a year old in one of his father's signature westerns: Desperate Trails (1921). It would be his only silent film appearance and his only turn as a "child actor." He would not appear in another film until 1946 when he appeared in the western Rolling Home. In the meantime he had served his country during the second world war in the Naval medical corps, and later--along side the legendary director that would later hire him John Ford, as a naval photographer (his first film with Ford was 3 Godfathers starring John Wayne). He was also briefly in the music business. Carey made his television debut in 1951 in the episode The Bacular Clock of the dramatic series Chevron Theater; and he had a recurring role on the western series The Adventures of Spin and Marty. During the decade of the 1960's he almost exclusively did television work. Later in life he appeared in a number of non-western film roles, having parts in such films as: Nickelodeon (1976), Gremlins (1984), Mask (1985), The Whales of August (1987), Back To The Future III (1990) and The Exorcist III (1990). His last appearance in a western was actually his last acting role before retirement; in 1997 he appeared in Last Stand at Saber River with Tom Selleck. He then retired to write (in 1996 he published his own autobiography). He made one final appearance in a cameo short The Adventures of Spin and Marty: Back in the Saddle with Harry Carey Jr. in 2005. Most recently, writer/director William Peter Blatty put out his directors cut of The Exorcist III entitled The Exorcist III: Legion, which was released in 2016--four years after Carey's death. Harry Carey Jr. passed away at the age of 91 on the 27th of December of natural causes in Santa Barbara. He is interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, along with his wife Marilyn. His wife was the daughter of actor Paul Fix.
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| [source: Louis du Mort-Find A Grave] |
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