Harry Carey

Harry Carey — Henry DeWitt Carey II — American actor who helped invent the screen Western and later became a beloved character presence in sound-era Hollywood, died in Brentwood, California, on September 21, 1947. He was sixty-nine. Born January 16, 1878, in the Bronx, New York, he studied law, turned to writing and acting, and by the 1910s was John Ford’s early Western star — lanky, moral, and already carrying the dust of the frontier myth. Silent-era audiences knew him as a cowboy hero of two-reelers and features; sound-era audiences rediscovered him as the wise, weathered supporting player in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Red River. He received an Academy Award nomination for Mr. Smith. Ranch life in California’s Santa Clarita Valley and a family that included son Harry Carey Jr. extended the name across generations of Western filmmaking. He died the same day as New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s papers were still mourning that city — a coincidence of calendar that placed two very different American public men in the same newspaper columns. Brentwood was the quiet end of a career that had taught Hollywood how a Westerner should stand. He died in Brentwood on September 21, 1947. Ford’s early Westerns still teach the grammar; Red River still shows the older Carey’s gravity. Carey’s gift was frontier presence — making the cowboy archetype feel like a person before it became a costume. Notice Nearby keeps the death date so September 21 remembers the Bronx-born actor who helped invent the American movie Western.