The Guardian (21/Apr/1994) - Obituary: Macdonald Carey
(c) The Guardian (21/Apr/1994)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Paramount Pictures, Ray Milland, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Teresa Wright
Velvet villain -- Obituary:Macdonald Carey
It fell to Hollywood actor Macdonald Carey, who has died aged 81, to speak what many critics consider to be Alfred Hitchcock's credo of original sin. At the end of Shadow Of A Doubt (1943) Detective Carey has exposed the charming Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) as the Widow murderer to his niece (Teresa Wright). In reply to her remark that her uncle hated the whole world, and thought that "People like us had no idea what the world was really like", Carey says: "It's not quite as bad as that. But sometimes it needs a lot of watching. It seems to go crazy every now and then. Like your Uncle Charlie."
During Carey's eight years under contract to Paramount (1942-1950), he was only rarely allowed to go crazy. Mostly he was confined to lightweight roles when Ray Milland or Fred McMurray were unavailable. He lost the male lead in Lady In The Dark (1944) to Milland, though he had played it on Broadway opposite Gertie Lawrence.
He does get Betty Hutton in Dream Girl (1948), though he represents dull reality, ending her dream life by proposing marriage. A pity, because he had a nice line in silky villainy, especially in Westerns. He is dashing and colourful than William Holden in The Streets Of Laredo (1949) and imbues Jim Bowie in Commanche Territory (1950), and Jesse James in The Great Missouri Raid (1951) with a degree of sophistication. In 1949, Carey was almost unrecognisable as Cesare Borgia in Bride Of Vengeance, a piece of prime Hollywood kitsch, and in the same year he was convincing as Nick Carraway, the empathetic narrator of The Great Gatsby, who stands up for Alan Ladd's Gatsby.
Joseph Losey gave Carey two of his most interesting roles. In The Lawless (1950), he played a disillusioned journalist who finds the energy to defend a chicano against the prejudice of a small Californian town; 11 years later he was an ambivalent American in The Damned.
His career did not seem to be particularly hampered by his alcoholism, which dated back to his four years in the Marines. (He joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1982). American audiences were most familiar with him in the daytime soap, The Days Of Our Lives, in which he played Dr Tom Horton for 30 years. His deep voice opened each episode with: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." It was the way he told them.
Macdonald Carey, born March 15, 1913; died March 21, 1994.
