Harry Carey Jr. Remembers

By PAT REEDER CLAREMORE (OK) - Hollywood was Will Rogers town in 1935. He had played in 71 motion pictures, 21 with sound. He had lived in California almost 20 years.      “He had a lust for life, a mindset that most people cannot attain without the use of drugs,” said Harry Carey Jr., whose movie-star father was a close friend and confidant of Will Rogers in the 1920s.      “In simple terms,” said Carey from his California home, “he was born with a high. He loved life so much that he hated to sleep because it robbed him of enjoying his surroundings, and the whims and ways of his fellow man. Every time I was in his presence I could not take my eyes off him.”      Many of Will’s friends were the Hollywood set. But it’s interesting they also shared other interests – roping, riding, polo and airplanes.      The younger Carey, “Dobe” to the late Jim Rogers, who grew up as a friend and playmate, called Rogers “one of the greatest men who ever lived.”      Carey, who came to Claremore in 1999 for the Aug. 15 ceremony at the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch, said the last time he saw Will was in 1935 at the Brown Derby in Hollywood.      He was with his parents and Will came to their table talking about the trip he was going to make with Wiley. He remembers his father saying, “Well, 16 hands is as high as I ever want to get off the ground.”      A month later Will was dead.      When he was about 9, Carey’s family lived in Brentwood and they would ride horseback from their place to the Rogers Ranch, about five miles away. While the fathers talked about horses and the picture business the boys played.      “Will would always be fiddling wih a rope,” he said.      “What I remember the most are the polo matches at the Riviera Country Club. Will’s two sons, Will Jr. and Jimmy, played too …”      He remembers his aunt taking them to watch Sunday polo games where spectators parked around the field and sat on the running boards to watch. “Will would wander over, leading his horse. He was always chewing gum.”      Carey wrote a book “Company of Heroes … My Life As An Actor In The John Ford Stock Company.” His third film in his almost half a century movie career was directed by Ford, his father’s longtime friend, also a Will Rogers director.      Carey Jr. asked Ford what it was like to direct Will Rogers.      “Oh, you don’t direct Will Rogers. You just let Will do what he wanted,” said Ford, who according to Carey was the most powerful director there was.      Ford partnered the younger Carey with another of his protégés – and another Oklahoman – Ben Johnson of Pawhuska. They starred in “Wagon Master,” that inspired the television series “Wagon T rain.”      Aug. 15, 1935 Harry Carey Jr. was in study hall at Black Foxe Military Academy. Word of the plane crash and Will’s death came over the public address system.      “I leaped up from my desk without permission and ran down three flights to the bathroom. I locked myself into a stall, and then I cried, and cried, and cried.”