John Ford and Harry Carey’s Long Western Partnership Explained
John Ford, a legendary Western director, had a long and productive relationship with actor Harry Carey at the start of their careers. In just four years, from 1917 to 1921, they made 25 films together. Carey even starred in Ford’s first feature-length film, Straight Shooting, in 1917. The majority of their films together, 21 out of 26, either exist in an incomplete state or are lost entirely.
Despite their prolific partnership, their relationship wasn’t strictly professional. Ford and Carey became good friends over the years, and after Carey’s death in 1947, Ford dedicated 3 Godfathers to his memory. Ford would go on to have an extensive relationship with Carey’s son, Harry Carey Jr., making 11 movies with him.
Ford and Carey’s movie streak wasn’t entirely unheard of 100 years ago. Some of the biggest stars of the silent film era would work with the same director on a litany of films. For example, Mary Pickford made nearly 100 feature-length and short films with director D.W. Griffith, and they even started United Artists together.
John Ford and Harry Carey’s partnership highlights the difference between cinema in the early 1900s and 100 years later. In the silent film era, actors and directors could pump out movies at an astonishing rate. Today, a single film takes years to develop, and there simply isn’t enough time for an actor and director to create such a prolific relationship. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that there will never be another partnership like the one John Ford and Harry Carey had.
