NOTEWORTHY DEATH

— Character actor in scores of Westerns

Harry Carey Jr., a character actor who was believed to be the last surviving member of director John Ford’s legendary Western stock company, died Thursday. He was 91.

Carey, whose career spanned more than 50 years and included such films as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers, died of natural causes, his daughter Melinda Carey said.

“In recent years, he became kind of the living historian of the modern era,” film critic Leonard Maltin told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. “He would get hired on films by young directors who just wanted to work with him, to be one step away from the legends.Some hired him to just hear his stories between takes.”

The son of silent-film Western star Harry Carey Sr. and his actress wife, Olive, Carey made more than 100 films. They included Red River, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, Big Jake, CahillU.S. Marshal, The Long Riders, The Whales of August and 1993’s Tombstone.

He was born Henry George Carey on May 16, 1921, on his father’s ranch north of Saugus and a 45-minute drive from Universal Studios, where Harry Sr. made Westerns in the 1910s and 1920s. More than two dozen were directed by John Ford, who became a close family friend.

The young Carey graduated from Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hollywood in the late 1930s, studied voice and made his stage debut, with his father, in summer stock in Maine. During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific theater, then worked in Washington on Navy training and propaganda films for Ford, at that time a naval officer.

In 1944, Carey married Marilyn Fix, daughter of character actor Paul Fix. He is survived by his wife; daughters Melinda and Lily; son Tom; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 12/30/2012

Upcoming Events