Harry Carey Jr.

The problem with the term “nepo baby” is that there’s no reason to believe that acting talent doesn’t run in families. Acting dynasties go at least back to the Booths in the US, and if there’s a huge difference between how Edwin Booth and his brother are remembered in history, well, I imagine Colin Hanks and Emilio Estevez could have quite the conversation on the subject of “and then there’s my brother” today. Not that I’m comparing either of their brothers with Edwin’s, of course. And so we finish out our consideration of the Carey family by considering Harry Carey Jr. His first role was as “young baby (uncredited)” in one of his father’s movies in 1921, but it lasted into my own adulthood through his own merits.

He was born on his father’s ill-fated Saugus ranch; the dam collapse that flooded it came four days before his seventh birthday. His father called him “Dobe,” short for “adobe,” for the colour of his hair. He served as a Pharmacist’s Mate 2^nd Class in the Navy during World War II before—and this was nepotism—being sent back to the States against his wishes to serve in the photographic unit of the Office of Strategic Services. Because his father’s friend John Ford arranged it, apparently. He finished the war making training films.

It is true that his career has no little to do with getting into Ford’s stable of actors. In fact he wanted a singing career, but it is what it is. After the war, he made a B picture called Rolling Home, which also featured future Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd in what would not be the last time their paths would cross. From there, he made Pursued with Robert Mitchum, and then Red River. It was the only movie he would make with his father, though they shared no scenes. It would not be the only movie he made with John Wayne or Howard Hawks or the pair together.

In time, it would be a little jarring to see him in anything that wasn’t a Western. He made a Perry Mason—about land rights and prospecting and so forth. He made a Knight Rider—about water rights. I don’t know what he was doing on ChiPS, but I can guess. And, okay, he was in The Whales of August, which is about as far from a Western as it gets in the contiguous US. But that’s just it; it’s kind of weird to think about him there. Even Dallas seems more his speed. (Yes, he did Dallas.) It’s also hardly surprising that he did a couple of spaghetti Westerns.

He was, as it happens, too old to play Fred White, who was in his thirties when he died on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. And I don’t know for sure if his father met Wyatt Earp; it’s actually not outside the realm of possibility that the younger Carey did. The timeline certainly works. It’s also definitely true that other men in their circle, such as good old John Ford, knew Earp. One assumes that Carey was able to tell some second- or third-hand anecdotes on the set of Tombstone, if nothing else. The amazing part is that it isn’t his last credit; he worked off and on for the next twelve years.