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‘I don’t know if Dobe can act, but he looks right – My Blog

The actor Harry Carey Jr, who has died aged 91, was the last surviving member of the director John Ford’s stock company, which included John Wayne, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, Anna Lee, Ward Bond, Andy Devine and Harry’s own parents, Olive and Harry Carey Sr. They formed a cohesive group and contributed to the distinctive world of the Fordian western.

Carey Jr, nicknamed “Dobe” by his father because his red hair was the same colour as the adobe bricks of his ranch house, made seven westerns with Ford, typically in the role of a greenhorn soldier. The most characteristic of these was Lieutenant Ross Pennell in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), the callow rival of John Agar for the hand of Joanne Dru. After she opts for the more handsome Agar, Carey is last seen staring out into the darkness.
In Rio Grande (1950), the third film in Ford’s great cavalry trilogy – after Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon – Carey and Johnson are two spirited troopers showing their horsemanship often without stunt doubles. In The Searchers (1956), arguably the peak of Ford’s westerns, Carey, when he realises many of his kin have been murdered and mutilated, and his girlfriend kidnapped by Comanches, goes mad, rides into the Comanche camp and is killed.
Carey was born on his parents’ 1,000-acre ranch in Saugus, north of Los Angeles. Because of the many Navajo people who worked on the ranch, he spoke Navajo before he spoke English. He had a chance to demonstrate this gift in Ford’s Wagon Master (1950). His father had formed a close relationship with Ford in the early days at Universal, starring in about 26 of Ford’s two-reelers. His mother later appeared with her son in two Ford westerns, The Searchers and Two Rode Together (1961).

Carey joined the navy in the second world war and served in the South Pacific in the medical corps, before being transferred (against his will) to serve under Ford in the Office of Strategic Services, assisting on a number of propaganda documentaries.
After the war, Carey’s attempts to escape the world of his father by trying a singing career failed, and he entered films in 1946 with a bit part in a B-melodrama, Rolling Home. This was followed by Pursued (1947), Raoul Walsh’s atmospheric psychological western, in which the boyish-looking Carey played the nervous suitor of Teresa Wright. He is egged on by the villain (Dean Jagger), in a suspenseful scene, into gunning for Robert Mitchum over an imagined insult to her.
In the same year, Howard Hawks cast Carey and his father in Red River (1948), though they had no scenes together. “I got the part when the young man originally cast was fired,” Carey told Sight and Sound in 2004. “Duke Wayne said, ‘I don’t know if Dobe can act, but he looks right.’ My big scene was with Duke when I’m talking about buying shoes for my girl. Hawks called ‘Cut!’ I thought I’d messed up. But he said, ‘Duke, you’ve lost your character. You’re smiling.’ Duke said, ‘Well if I was grinning, it’s only because the kid’s doing a good job.’ Right then I felt I had the world by the tail.”
Ford then cast him as one of the eponymous heroes of the religiose Three Godfathers (1948), dedicated to Carey Sr, who died in 1947. (Carey Sr had been in the 1916 silent version of the film, directed by Edward LeSaint.) In Ford’s film, Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Carey Jr, as the Abilene Kid, are three “wise” bank-robbing bandits on the run in the desert, who rescue a baby after the death of his mother. Carey sings Streets of Laredo as a lullaby and has a moving death scene in which he lapses back into childhood to recite the Lord’s Prayer. According to Carey, after the first take of the death scene, which he fluffed, Ford left him to bake in the scorching heat of Death Valley for 30 minutes. When the director returned, a near delirious Carey delivered his speech, his mouth so dry he could not swallow and with a voice that resembled the croaking of a dying man. “Why didn’t you do that the first time?” a grinning Ford asked Carey. “See how easy it was? You done good! That’s a wrap!”
Ford’s splendid Wagon Master had the extremely likeable and unaffected Carey and Johnson as two young horse-traders who join a wagon train of Mormons headed for Utah. Carey seldom had a lead again on the big screen but he was visible in dozens of westerns, mainly because he had become an iconic figure through the Ford classics.
Among his many roles, mostly on a horse and in uniform, was the young Dwight Eisenhower in Ford’s tribute to the West Point military academy, The Long Gray Line (1955). On television, he regularly appeared in Laramie, Bonanza and Have Gun – Will Travel. The latter title could have applied to Carey who, in the 1970s, when fewer and fewer horse operas were being made in the US, continued in the same vein in several spaghetti westerns.
He also had small parts in Gremlins (1984); The Exorcist III (1990), as Father Kanavan; Back to the Future III (1990), as a saloon old-timer; and T
ombstone (1993), as a town marshal. In 1994, he wrote the book Company of Heroes: My Life As an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company, which was full of insights into the films and anecdotes about the stars.
In 1944 Carey married Marilyn Fix, the daughter of the actor Paul Fix, who featured in a few westerns with his son-in-law. He is survived by Marilyn and his children, Melinda, Lily and Tom.

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How did Paul Koslo ever have a tense encounter with star John Wayne ? – My Blog

In 1975, the Canadian actor starring The Duke in Rooster Cogburn. At the time, Koslo was only 19 and still relatively green in the industry. So working with the Hollywood legend was a bit stressful.


During an installment of World on Westerns, Paul Koslo shared his experiences with John Wayne, including a time where he nearly stepped on Wayne’s lines.As the story goes, Wayne had a short 15 line monologue. And once he was finished, Koslo was supposed to respond. And as they were filming, Wayne said his part. But when it was Koslo’s turn, he froze.“The director said ‘Paul, why didn’t you say your lines?’” the actor remembered.

“And I said, ‘well, because I didn’t wanna cut him off because he hadn’t said all of his lines yet.’” Hearing the conversation, John Wayne jumped in saying, “who’s gonna? Nobody’s gonna cut me off. I can say whatever I want, you got it, kid?”Of course, the interaction made Koslo nervous, and the only response he could muster was, “okay, sir.”However, the actor admitted that the Western icon wasn’t as intimidating as the story made him sound.

Koslo shared that as long as his co-stars worked hard, Wayne was always their biggest supporter.“My impression of him was that if you did your stuff, and you were right on top of it, he was your best buddy. But if you were like a slacker, or you weren’t prepared, he could get on your case.”During the AWOW interview, Paul Koslo also shared some details behind the age-old feud between John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn.

“I mean, Kate and him, they were always like this,” said Koslo, while punching his fists together.According to Koslo, politics were behind the fight. Hepburn was a democrat and Wayne was a republican.“It seemed like… in a fun way. I don’t know if it was for real,” he admitted. “You know, she would be sitting on the hood of a truck going like a hundred feet down to the set where they were shooting, and how Wallis was having heart attacks. She was really a daredevil, and she was full of piss and vinegar.”

The actor also noted that he didn’t get to spend much time with the actress, so he couldn’t get a proper gauge on the so-called feud. Almost all his time was spent with The Duke.The only interaction Koslo had with Hepburn was while shooting an intense scene where they were “moving this nitroglycerin to another location because we were going to rob the U.S. Treasury with it, and [John Wayne’s] about to ambush us.”And that happened right before Paul Koslo nearly stepped on John Wayne’s lines.

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What John Wayne said in his angry letter to Clint Eastwood and how Eastwood responded. – My Blog

John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are the two biggest icons of the Western movies, however, Wayne wasn’t always a fan of Eastwood’s work. In fact, Wayne hated one of Eastwood’s Westerns so much he sent him a letter decrying the film. Here’s how Eastwood reacted to the letter — and how the public reacted to this movie.

This Clint Eastwood movie was a lot darker than John Wayne’s films : First, a little background. The Western was a staple of American cinema from its early days. It often presented a glorified view of American expansionism. During and after the civil rights movement, Westerns began to evolve, often presenting a critical or at least cynical view of the Old West. Movies like that became especially popular during the 1970s, but by the 1980s the genre was no longer an American staple.


One of the more famous dark Westerns from the 1970s was High Plains Drifter. The film is about a mysterious criminal who comes into town, to get revenge for his brother who was murdered as many of the townsfolk watched by idly. No one in the film is very sympathetic — they’re all either evil or passive in the face of evil. It’s a far cry from the more uplifting films which made Wayne famous.


What John Wayne said in his letter to Clint Eastwood — and how Eastwood responded : It’s very easy to see High Plains Drifter as a critique of the American West. According to the book Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western, that’s how Wayne saw the film. In addition, he saw it as incorrect.Eastwood told Kenneth Turan “John Wayne once wrote me a letter saying he didn’t like High Plains Drifter. He said it wasn’t really about the people who pioneered the West.

I realized that there’s two different generations, and he wouldn’t understand what I was doing. High Plains Drifter was meant to be a fable: it wasn’t meant to show the hours of pioneering drudgery. It wasn’t supposed to be anything about settling the West.” According to the book John Wayne: The Life and Legend, Eastwood did not write back. How the public reacted to ‘High Plains Drifter’ : Clearly, Wayne was upset by the film. This raises an interesting question: Did High Plains Drifter resonate with the public?

According to Box Office Mojo, High Plains Drifter earned over $15 million. Even by the standards of the 1970s, High Plains Drifter was not a tremendous hit. For comparison, Box Office Mojo reports a less dark 1970s Western starring Eastwood called The Outlaw Josey Wales earned over $31 million.Regardless, High Plains Drifter has a bit of a legacy. It was the first Western that Eastwood directed himself. Eastwood would go on to direct several other Westerns including the Oscar-winning Unforgiven. Wayne wasn’t much of a fan of High Plains Drifter — and neither was the public.

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John Wayne spent a lot of time in Mexico doing charity work at orphanages . – My Blog

Easily overlooked amid the prolific acting career and larger-than-life persona was John Wayne’s generosity. He was generous with his family, whom he welcomed into his own career with open arms. And in the years since his ԁеаtһ, the philanthropy carried out by his estate has been dedicated to cancer research.Recently, the official John Wayne Instagram account posted a throwback photo from 1970.


It shows Duke visiting a Mexican orphanage with actress Raquel Welch.“Giving back to the community was important to Duke, he’s pictured here with Raquel Welch visiting an orphanage in Mexico in 1970,” the caption of the post reads.The heartwarming photo shows John Wayne giving a smile to a child outside the orphanage. Raquel Welch can be seen behind him to the right, doing the same thing.

John Wayne Had an Affinity for Mexico : John Wayne spent a lot of time in Mexico. For one, the iconic Western actor filmed no less than six movies in the country throughout his career. Beyond his acting career, however, Duke just loved spending time there.Granted, most of that time wasn’t spent at orphanages. But John Wayne did his small part in other ways too.

The town of Chupaderos in Northwestern Mexico was effectively built by Wayne and the movies he filmed there. Although, it did fall on hard times after he stopped making movies there.Nonetheless, Mexico was one of Wayne’s favorite destinations. His estate posted another photo back in April of the Western icon taking in the sights of Acapulco.“Duke loved to travel all over the world and one of his favorite places to visit was Mexico.

He’s pictured here in Acapulco in the late 1940’s, where he owned a hotel called Hotel Los Flamingos with his friend Johnny Weissmuller, who played Tarzan,” part of the caption reads.One of the things that brought Wayne to Mexico was his yacht, the Wild Goose. One of his favorite activities was sailing it down the coast of Mexico with his family.“For a long time, whenever I dreamed about him, we were on the boat,” John Wayne’s daughter Marisa said.Duke Owned a Hotel in Acapulco, Mexico : As the caption from the Instagram posts mentions, John Wayne owned a hotel in Mexico.

Along with a group of celebrities, John Wayne bought Hotel Los Flamingos in 1954 to use as a private getaway.After using it for vacations and private events for a few years, the group decided to sell the hotel. Today, Hotel Los Flamingos is still in operation. And fortunately for travel-inclined fans of the Duke, getting a room there is actually pretty affordable.

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