This gentleman was literally born into the movie business.  His father, Harry Carey, Sr. was a movie star, beginning his career in 1917 in Ft. Lee, NJ, and later coming to Hollywood to work with DW Griffith.  He started Ford as a director and they made 28 silent films, of which Universal saved only two. Another reason to support American Movie Classics film preservation.

 I interviewed Harry Carey, Jr., (aka "Dobe" to his close friends), on April 7, 1994.   Both Dobe and his wife Marilyn have been always so kind and cooperative in any questions I have had regarding his films with Maureen. If I learned anything in the past seven years of research it's that the real unsung heroes of the film industry are the character actors and stuntmen.  All of his life Dobe Carey was surrounded by famous people from the industry, including Director John Ford (who was Dobe's unofficial God Father.)  Like Maureen, Harry Carey, Jr. has worked long and hard hours in the industry and has earned the respect of his co-workers and fans.

Dobe's persona was that of a clean-cut, gentle man, and my interview with him proved he was just that.  Most impressive was his humility and obvious honesty.  He did not inflate his own accomplishments; if anything he concentrated more on his peers and his admiration for  them. The late Ben Johnson was one of Dobe's closest friends. If you love behind the scenes movie stories, you must buy his book "Company of Heroes -My Life As An Actor in The John Ford Stock Company".

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of Harry Carey, Jr.'s book send check or money order to:
(Mastercard or Visa available)

                                    Harry Carey, Jr.
                                    P.O. Box 3256, Durango, CO 81302

                                    Price, incl. shipping: $33.00 (hard cover) or soft cover $18.00)

This book is a "must" for film buffs.  Dobe includes many behind the scenes stories of his films that includes the making of "Rio Grande" (my favorite part of his book).   Maureen also appeared with Dobe  in "The Long Gray Line" and "Big Jake" and "Rare Breed."

Note:  I'd love to hear your reviews of Dobe's book (those of you who have already read it and those of you who are ordering it now) - I'll publish your comments on the page...and if you have a small gif or jpeg image file of yourself - send it along to me at Aknot@uswest.net

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Hope you Enjoy the Interview Below

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June: What I’d like to do is start out talking about Rio Grande because, as I said in my letter, it’s one of my very favorite films.

Harry:  Rio Grande is?

June: Yes, I’m not like these other well-informed cowboy guys. Being a female I have the more romantic aspect involved.  It’s a beautiful love story.

Harry: I’m not like a lot of my contemporaries who refuse to watch anything unless it’s at least 40 years old.  I enjoy a lot of the new movies.

June: I tend to pretty much stick to the older films, but I do feel some of the new ones are very good.

Harry:  I think some of them could do without forcing bad language.  It kind of spoils some of the western. They didn’t use the 4-letter word in the westerns back in the 1880’s.  World War-2 started that.

June: I’m kind of a purist in that I think that even though The Quiet Man is the most celebrated of the two films, Rio Grande was a fantastic film.

Harry: It’s a good story.

June: Of course we have the John Ford magic there.  I know about your background; your father and father-in-law, but obviously this was a way of life for you; this is the way you grew up in the industry. Were you a stunt man first or an actor?

Harry: Oh, they put that in some articles and I have never said that.  There are times when you’re a stuntman when you don’t want to be. But as far as being a stuntman like Ben was, no, I never really was a professional stuntman.

June:  I understand you did the Roman riding…

Harry:  Well, I’ve always been a good horseback rider – of course Ben  (referring to the now deceased Ben Johnson) is the best in the world, but you know, I learned o ride when I was real young, of course, and then when I got in the westerns I just did a lot of wild rides.  I never had to be doubled riding…never.

June:  I understand that John Ford treated everyone of his performers (I talked with Anna Lee) a different way to get a performance out of them.  Now how was he with you?  Was he sweet and gentle, or was he mean and onery….

Harry:  Meaner than hell! But he also could be very gentle.  It depend on what the situation was.  Ann is right, and he treated everybody…he never talked down to anybody.  He was not a snob or anything like that.

June:  This one or two takes business, has that always been true with Ford; that he only tries to do it in one or two takes?

Harry:  Oh yes – that was Ford. With Ford if you did a stunt it was once. That was it.  And if you did a scene it was once.  You rehearsed a lot and then only did one take – very very seldom did you do more than one take.

June: I understand that Moab, Utah was the place were Rio Grande was filmed.

Harry:  Yah, that was in Moab.

June: It was kind of a deserted place I understand, sparsely populated.

Harry:  The first one we did there was Wagon Master. That was in 1949 and that as the first film that was ever shot there. Then the next year was 1950 and we did Rio Grande there.  It’s sort of a miniature Monument Valley; it has those wonderful red bit of mountains.

June: As I told you I’ve been doing a lot of research on Maureen O’Hara; she knew Ford and Wayne years before they ever made Rio Grande but it was their first film together.

Harry: Yes, I can’t remember the first picture Maureen did with Ford.  John Wayne of course knew him when he was just a prop guy.

June: I’ve read that John Wayne treated Maureen kind of roughly a lot of times and that he was kind of like a big brother. Was that really the case or just in a film like “McLintock” where the script called for it.

Harry: Yes, he could be rough.  On a John Ford film Duke was kind of a ham.  He was a star, Ford was the star. There was real mad and there was acting mad and you could tell the difference. Duke wasn’t one of the guys who didn’t get picked on. The only guys he didn’t pick on were ones he liked, and a lot of it was jesting, but you didn’t know at times.  He’d never bark at anybody in the crew – the crew came back year after year after year – he always had the same crew.

June:  He had to have been very fond of all of these people – tyrant or angel.

Harry: Yes, very fond.

June: Because even though he sometimes put on this act, like you say, I think that it has to be awfully hard work – making a western.  One of the things I realized the more I read – these locations – hot horrible locations – it can’t have been all fun, that’s for sure.

Harry:  No, no they were not all fun.  The fun was in the evening around dinner and stuff.  He loved that. He loved everybody around the table and the camaraderie around the table; but on the set it was work. Someone asked me “How long did it take to make ‘Yellow Ribbon’” and I said “28 days.”  He said, “What!” I said “28 days!”  Now movie westerns take more than 6 months.  I think back on how he did it – he started about 5 in the morning and he wrapped around 4.  Even on “tombstone” I got there at 10:00 in the morning and I didn’t get through until 7:00 or 8:00 at night.

June:  How did you feel? Was there a big difference making the more current film “Tombstone” Is there a big difference in the way they do things now?

Harry:  I enjoyed working on “Tombston” but the thing is though it’s very frustrating because there are a lot of people making suggestions – there are a lot of people saying they have a better idea – and the movie stars say “I got an even better idea.”

June:  They didn’t do that in the earlier films I bet.

Harry:  Oh my gosh no.  Not only didn’t you make suggestions with Ford, but you didn’t do it with Howard Hawks.  They made a lot of movies and there were the real boss  There is a lot of tension on the sets now. There never was on a Ford set because they knew they had the best in the world.

June:  Yes I found that the more I see of Ford’s films, the more I like them.  I watch them more than once and I find things to enjoy that I didn’t notice previously.  I think they made much more of Ford that they should – what I mean is they made him “over complicated – always analyzing his motives and techniques.  I think he was a gifted film maker. All these intellects start writing these books that this is wayt Ford was trying toachieve, etc.  Most I couldn’t even understand.

Harry:  I agree – I don’t know what they’re talking about either; that why you’ll love my book (referring to “In the Company of Heroes.”_

June:  Oh, I can hardly wait to read your book.

 You’re going to Tim Lilley’s John Wayne convention aren’t you?

Harry: Sure – How about you?

June: I’m gonna try – I have a couple of other things I want to do.  I interviewed Charles FitzSimons in October, and he, of course produced a film, “The Deadly Companions” with Sam Peckinpah.  Have you ever been in any Peckinpah westers?

Harry:  No.  I waitd in his office once for an hour and a half trying to get to see him. Then at a later date he told me “The next picture I make, you’re gonna be in it” and I told him, “I said, “Sam, I waited an hour and a half to see you.”  He replied, “Well I didn’t know it.”  I liked him. I think he made some great movies.

June: You remind of another actor, Martin Milner – in that you always appear so youthful, wholesome and young.

Harry: Really?

June: Yah, and I wondered at what point did they finally allow you to be mature – other than “Big Jake” – and that was pretty girssly.

Harry:  People say even today I look young for 73,b ut I still don’t walk very young any more, I’m kind of crippled up.

June:  I understand your favorite film was…

Harry: “The Searchers”

June: Don’t you think that the consensus of all of Ford’s films that more people like “The Searchers” than any of the rest?

Harry: Yes -  but I think probably the greatest film might be “The Grapes of Warth” “The Informer” “The Quiet Man” and “How Green Was My Valley” – he just made so many wonderful films.

Of course you would have gotten along great with him – he liked ladies and was always very polite and very nice to them.  He was only kind of rough with the guys.  Sometimes he was rough on Maureen.

June: He was rough on Maureen?

Harry: A couple of times I saw him – he made her cry.

June: There is a lot written about Maureen. She is very candid about her career.  She was certainly quite a beautiful woman and sometimes I can’t help but feel that this got in the way. Ford, however, gave her the freedom to act.  Not just be decorative.

Harry: She’s a wonderful actress. She never got enough credit for being a great actress.

June: When I sit and watch the scene from “Rio Grande” where the Sons of the Pioneers are seranading them – they each have one line and they stand there through the whole scene, reacting to one another – it is spectacular – they don’t do that kind of acting any more.

Harry:  There is no sentimentality any more – once in a while you see it.

June: Some think that “The Long Gray Line” was a picture Ford made for himself.

Harry:  I do to.

June: That was the set that Maureen seemed to be very unhappy on – at least I read several things about it. You never know how much of that is true.

Harry:  And that’s where Ford made her cry.  It’s wasn’t for things he he got mad at her. The first thing he started out saying that Ty Power had a better accent than she had.

June: That was a mistake!

Harry: That got us off on the wrong foot and so, I just think you know; she’s a girl who doesn’t like to be put down, so I don’t remember any big flareups or antyhing like that; but I know that there was one scene, and they never used it in the picture.  He had her leaning out the window, shaking a rug and he said something nasty to her and she started to cry and ran downstairs and left the set. But that’s the only time.

June:  You were only in the three films with her – “Long Gray Line” “Big Jake” and “Rio Grande.”

Harry:  Oh, there was “Rare Breed”

June: I forgot you were in “Rare Breed”

Harry:I think there’s another one but I can’t think of it.

June: I can’t either at the moment.

 “The Searchers” did it take longer than most movies?

Harry:  Yes, because we made “The Three Godfathers” “Wagonmaster” and “Rio Grande” and his own company was making those pictures.  And even though the financing came from RKO or whatever, but they weren’t too rich companies – so he shot very fast.  Then on “The Searchers” Warner Bros. And Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Sonny Whitney, one of the richest men in the world,  was financing, so Ford took about 6 or 7-8 weeks on the picture. But it was a more complicated picture to shoot because it covered 5 years.

June:  I notice “Big Jake” got a little bad press about the violence which was very unlike a John Wayne film.

Harry:  Yes, for a John Wayne film that was quite a lot in there.

June:  I have a little trouble when I see a John Wayne film and they have him with any other love interest than Maureen O’Hara.  It was like something was missing when she wasn’t there.

Harry: Yah right.  No one wanted to see Duke and Maureen split up. There were not physically attracted to one another at all – I think

I saw Marueen once at a dinner thye had for her.  I can’t remember what it was about, but we went and I went over and talked to her.  She’s just beautiful.

June:  Yes, she still is. She’s an extremely striking woman.

 What about Chuck Roberson?  I read his book and also the Campfire Conversations with the Bob Morgan thing.  Obviously Chuck was quite a womanizer and had quite a good time – but was he as flamboyant as he writes, or did he exaggerate a lot of things he related.

Harry:  Oh, he exaggerated a little bit.  I enjoyed the book and I lived through.

June:  When is your book going to come out?

Harry:  In May. They don’t do a lot of exploitation at Scarecrow Press and so their going to have a book signing and stuff like that. So it will be places like that but it won’t be in Walden Book and the other one. – Crown Books.But chain stores; so it will be more independent, like libraries, of course.

June:  Well good luck on your book.

Harry: Thanks – nice talking with you.

June:  Likewise.

©June Beck 8-22-99