| Philip Carey | |
|---|---|
| Born | Eugene Joseph Carey July 25, 1925 Hackensack, New Jersey, United States |
| Died | February 6, 2009 (aged 83) New York, New York, United States |
| Other names | Phil Carey |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1951–2008 |
Philip Carey (July 15, 1925 – February 6, 2009)[1][2] was an American actor.
He was born as Eugene Joseph Carey in Hackensack, New Jersey.[3] A former U.S. Marine, Carey was wounded as part of the ship's detachment of the USS Franklin during World War II and served again in the Korean War.[4]
Carey made appearances in films such as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), This Woman is Dangerous with Joan Crawford (1952) Calamity Jane with Doris Day (1953), Pushover (1954), The Long Gray Line (1955) and Monster (1979).
Carey's career started with ten characters in ten episodes of the Ford Theatre, a highly popular 1950s drama television series. He also narrated thirty-one episodes of the documentary Untamed World. He portrayed fictional detective Philip Marlowe in a 1959 ABC series of the same name, Philip Marlowe. He portrayed four different characters on as many episodes of ABC's mystery series 77 Sunset Strip starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
In 1956, Carey starred on the NBC series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers. Carey's character was portrayed as Canadian because Carey reportedly could not master a British accent.[5]
From 1965–1967, Carey played Captain Edward Parmalee on the NBC western television series Laredo, set in Laredo, a South Texas city located on the Rio Grande. His co-stars included William Smith, Peter Brown, and Neville Brand. After Laredo, Carey guest starred in an episode of ABC's military-western Custer starring Wayne Maunder in the title role.
In 1971, Carey guest-starred on the landmark fifth installment of All in the Family, playing Steve, an ex-professional football player friend of Archie Bunker's who tells Archie he's gay. The episode, entitled "Judging Books By Covers", was the subject of a rant captured on President Richard Nixon's tapes (May 13, 1971, 498-005) and was one of the first times homosexuality had been dealt with sympathetically on U.S. network television.
From 1979 until late 2007, he played the protective Texan patriarch Asa Buchanan on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live.
Carey became well known for a series of tongue-in-cheek television commercials for Granny Goose potato chips, in which he self-identified as "Granny Goose", portraying the company's spokesperson as a tough cowboy.
Carey was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2006 and underwent chemotherapy.
In late March 2007, it was announced that Carey would be exiting One Life to Live. He had appeared in one episode in 2003 and one episode of All My Children in 2004. He appeared in an additional nine episodes of One Life to Live between January 3, 2007 and May 16, 2007. Carey turned down an offer to go to recurring status with the show (although he nevertheless did, in fact, make several appearances on the show after his official exit in late 2007, including several appearances in July 2008, with his final appearance having been on December 29, 2008).
Carey was married twice, in 1949 to Maureen Peppler, with whom he had a son Jeff and two daughters, Linda & Lisa. At the time of his death, he had been married since 1974 to Colleen Welch, with whom he had a son Sean and a daughter Shannon.
He was close friends with his on-screen sons, Clint Ritchie and Robert S. Woods.[6]
Carey died of lung cancer at the age of eighty-three, less than a week after the death of Clint Ritchie, who played Asa's son Clint on One Life to Live from 1979 to 1998.