Harry Carey — A Self-Made Westerner (1921) 🇺🇸

Harry Carey dropped an armful of dogs and pointed toward the far horizon. “My land runs all the way over there — and if you’ve got time I’ll show you the herd of cattle I’ve got grazing on some of it — just the kind of herd I’ve always wanted. In fact, this whole place just suits me.”

by J. B. Waye

“But you took to ranching some time ago,” I reminded him.

“Oh, yes, at Newhall. That was a great place ; as soon as I’d finished a picture I’d hike for home, get a bunch of cowboys together, and go off on a hunting trip in the San Bernardinos and the Sierra Nevada range. Mountain lion, deer, scores of quail — it was good hunting, all right.

“I could ride to Universal City from there, too — Pete, my big chestnut hunter, and I used to make the trip together. But I sold that place and came to the San Francisquito Canon; this is my real home, for good and all.”

But as we rode over the broad acres I couldn’t help remembering Harry Carey who wasn’t a cowboy; a chap who didn’t care for studying law and living up to his position as son of a judge of New York State’s supreme court, and who took to writing plays and putting them on himself, when nobody else would do it. “Montana” was one of those early productions, a successful one, too.

After that the pictures called him, and he went to Biograph, becoming the screen’s first gentleman villain. And for the last four years he’s been riding the range for Universal, a self-made Westerner, if there ever was one.

“So you’ve got everything you want?” I asked, as we went back to the ranch house. “Just about.” he said, with a grin.

Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1921