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(January 16, 1878 – September 21,
1947)
 Carey
was born Henry DeWitt Carey II in The Bronx, New York, the son of
Ella J. Ludlum and Henry DeWitt Carey, 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.
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. |
