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The Carey Creed
If you're making something, make it good, says Harry.
By Malcolm H. Oettinger
IN the days when directors did not wear puttees and Fairbanks was only the name of a soap, when Fatty and Mabel were simply Fatty and Mabel, and Chaplin had still to appear, 'when Vitagraph was the king cannery and Kerrigan the idol of the fillums, when two reels meant a "feature special" and the premiere blonde was identified on the posters only as Little Mary, in those bygone days, scented faintly now with faded rosemary, Harry Carey was playing the Broadwayward bad man seven days in the week
and sometimes oftener for a rising young chap named Griffith who was operating in the old Biograph Studio in New York.
Carey has a unique explanation for being cast in crook parts in those early days.
"D. W. knew that I was a bad actor," he grinned, "so he simply made me be a 'bad-actor' character on the screen."
Like many first-rate Thespians, this Carey has never been petted and pawed by interviewers, so his past was a closed book to me. He was asked where he had attempted the stage stuff before performing in the Griffith arena.
"The less said of it the better," he replied. "I was supposed to be a lawyer, not an outlaw. But New York University held me about as long as you can hold sand in your fingers. The minstrels got me. Blackface ! Then burleskew" — that's the Carey pronounciation. "And finally trouping in such classics as 'Heart and Soul,' 'A Poor Girl's Downfall,' and other things like that."
"More sinned against than sinning," I suggested.
"Check !" said Mr. Carey. He is not the pretty picture man, not the close-up craving Adonis who insists upon inferior support to let his own work stand out, not the celluloid I-am who calls for a clear stage and more spotlight on his eyes. Harry Carey is a regular guy, with hair on his chest, and a surprising lack of fake chatter about his "art."
"Pictures are fine things," he thinks, "so long as they aren't abused. Sex stuff and dime-novel truck are worse than I can't figure how these work, when they let Bara's stuff float by, and some of these 'Why Leave Your Bathrooms ?' — the very pictures that are bound to hurt the industry.
"Lots o' people grin when they see me, back in New York, and say 'Hokum !' when I tell 'em I'm still doing Westerns, but I'm blamed if it's hokum. We've been using human interest, with a Western locale, that's all. 'Overland Red' was more character than Western. So was 'Sundown Slim.' I can't stand this damn Jesse James type of cowboy — busting into the big scene to register a hundred feet o' close-up. It's the bunk."
His views give an: excellent idea of the man himself. He's sandy-haired' and stocky, with the loose gait of the real cow-puncher — acquired, be it added, on his ranch at San Francisquito Canon, where the Carey cows and pigs and horses are the subject of comment for miles around.
"I never thought I'd come to this," said Carey, indicating the corral just north of us, and the mesquitecovered ground we were standing on, "but while in the trouping game I got sick, and doctors told me to Continued on page 91
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