Tag Archives: doris carey

Doris E. Carey 1940 – 2017

Posted by Marisa on

Very sad news to report, via Romeo Carey:

Doris Carey, 77, Mother, Actress, Poet, Theanthropist

LOS ANGELES, June 7—Doris Erica Radlinger-Carey, actress, poet, and best known as the wife of character actor Timothy Carey (they met in Germany in 1957 while Carey was making Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory), died on Wednesday at Arcadia Methodist Hospital. She was 77. Her son Romeo announced the death and said the cause was a heart attack.

Doris Carey’s acting career began with a part in Timothy Carey’s 1961 movie The World’s Greatest Sinner and 1969 TV series Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena. Mrs. Carey was also a published author of a book of poems entitled Echoes of A Soul in Anguish.

Mrs. Carey was her husband’s writing partner on several movie scripts and plays, including The Insect Trainer. Mrs. Carey’s domestic life was filled with homemaking, gardening, knitting, animal rescue, and other philanthropic endeavors.

In addition to her son Romeo, she is survived by her five other children: Mario, Velencia, Silvana, Dagmar and Germain, and six grandchildren: Priscilla, Ambria, Kevin, Fiory, Akira, and Prima.

Mrs. Carey will be laid to rest on Wednesday, June 14, 2017 alongside her husband at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.

Happy Father’s Day!

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Wishing all you dads out there a wonderful Father’s Day! Among the many virtues of this day is the opportunity I get to post this great pic once again. It’s Timothy, his wife Doris and their six young’uns, from the early 1970s. It accompanied the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).

From the Filmfax Plus #102 articleHappy day, dads, fathers and father figures!

Quote of the Week

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EXT. MAN KOW CAFE – NIGHT

Chinese – Cantonese Restaurant, downtown. Old, oriental section.

INT. CAFE – NIGHT – FULL VIEW

Old. Worn booths; out-dated restaurant, two cockroaches race up the wall; few Chinese customers. On large, round table in rear of dining section, near entrance to kitchen, Fiore, Josie and Phil are seated in that order around table.

PHIL DIONE: Fiore’s friend is 44, husky, medium weight and height, pleasant. He has a long time crush on Josie.

Fiore is wearing his colorful bib, chop sticks in hand. Adorning the table are six platters of exotic food. Waiter brings out last platter, sets it on table.

FIORE

(watering at the mouth)

Now it’s complete. That’s my favorite: pigtails and peanuts… smell that sauce…

(inhales)

…Toa deea (thank you, in Chinese)

Josie and Phil are surveying all the gourmet dishes.

FIORE

(spreading his arms)

Boy! King Faruk had nothing on us… if people only knew what they are missing…

JOSIE

Then, we couldn’t get a seat.

FIORE

Let me have your plates.

Takes Josie’s and Phil’s plate, large spoon and proceeds to load them up with food.

FIORE

Chow toy…

(smells)

mmm…

(Ground pork with pickled spicy green roots or preserved garlic tops.)

Phil laughs.

JOSIE

He swears by this food.

FIORE

Son of a bitch; what an incredible edible.

CLOSE VIEW ON FIORE

picking around food with chop sticks.

FIORE

Black mushrooms from Tibet in oyster sauce… mmm…

Fiore with his chop sticks, picks up and devours a large dripping black mushroom. Fiore is in ecstasy.

FIORE

I feel like this is my last meal before the execution.

FULL VIEW

Phil and Josie start withdrawing their plates, loaded with food, ready to dig in.

FIORE

Hold it! You gotta try this. Sweet and sour Rock Cod. Fileted fish and those pickled lemon rinds, fresh ginger, pineapple, green peppers. Fantastic!

He puts it on their plates, deftly picks up a piece, gulps it down.

FIORE

How hun hoh (tastes good)

Phil and Josie take their plates.

FIORE

Squid.

Takes Josie’s plate, piles on more food, does the same with Phil.

JOSIE

That’s enough, Fiore!

She takes her plate.

FIORE

Hey, waiter!… where’s the plum sauce and mustard! More hot tea please. Got to have it so hot, it’ll burn your lips.

Waiter hurriedly brings small dishes with plum sauce and hot mustard. Phil and Josie are eating away with forks.

FIORE

(shakes head)

Use chop sticks… that’s the only way to eat Chinese food.

Phil, mouth full of food, shakes his head, swallows.

FIORE

(demonstrates with pigtail)

Spot of sauce, dash of mustard…

CLOSE ON FIORE

Fiore, with his chop sticks, expertly samples every platter, then touches it, Chinese-style, to his bowl of rice, before eating it.

FIORE

Let me show you the Chinese custom… take the bowl in your left hand like this, hold your chop sticks like a pencil, pick up what ever you want… you touch it to the rice first, bring the bowl to your lower lip, take your chop sticks and scoop the rice into your mouth, like so.

PHIL AND JOSIE

eating but not really enjoying it.

CLOSE ON PAUL LEE, the chef, standing at kitchen entrance smiling.

FIORE (O.S.)

Paul Lee is the world’s greatest Chinese chef… Long live Man Kow!

PAUL LEE

Thank you.

CLOSE ON FIORE

as he picks up a piece of squid, letting the tentacles dangle from his lips.

O.S. Phil and Josie burst out laughing.

FIORE

After this I’m taking you to a Chinese philosopher.

– Timothy and Doris Carey, Fiore (an original screenplay or three-hour teleplay); final draft May 1982

He'll Never See Daylight (1975)

From the Baretta episode “He’ll Never See Daylight”, but obviously the Fiore spirit is there. Also, I’m hungry for Chinese food now.

Pic of the Day: “Superstar” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Today’s pic is another glimpse of grumpy hit man Anderson from “Superstar,” the fourth of only nine episode of the ill-fated Supertrain series, first airing on March 14, 1979. He’s not quite so grumpy here, as he’s reminiscing about the teddy bear he had as a kid.

Superstar - 1979

“You had a teddy bear?” asks his fellow hit man Mills Watson. “Sure, I got him after they took away my dog.” “They took away your dog?” “After I bit him. He had a little discipline problem.” Romeo Carey told me that his mother Doris used to make teddy bears. I wonder if this was one of hers?

Quote of the Week

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Romeo Carey recently heard from Bill Winckler, the son of Betty Sturm, who portrayed one of God Hilliard’s devoted followers in The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962). His mother had some fascinating memories of Timothy and her participation in the film.

Mom kind of fell into acting, but really didn’t want to do it.  However, she had a natural ability for it and she was great.  She worked in an Arabian Knights/Sinbad type movie, and then was cast in Timothy Carey’s The World’s Greatest Sinner.  A friend was going to audition for Sinner, and asked Mom to join her . . . so she did.  She needed the money, so why not.  Mom recalls auditioning at what may have been a side office near Timothy Carey’s residential home.  A lot of people were there.  She remembered Timothy’s face from some movies where he played the bad guy.  He met with her personally, and she could never forget his face . . .  a thin one that she thought played killers or morticians or whatnot.  Mom recalled thinking to herself that if she bumped into him at night, she’d be scared to death. . . but in reality, Mom found Timothy to be a very nice, kind, gentle soul.  She liked him a lot.  She told him she stayed at the Hollywood Studio Club, and had just finished a part in an Arabian themed film.  He thought that was great, and he liked her because she was German, she was polite, etc.  Mom recalls speaking German to Timothy’s wife too, finding her to be a lovely, kind lady.  She really liked Timothy’s wife, liked the family, and recalls seeing their many kids.  
 
Mom thought highly of Timothy Carey, thinking he was a nice man, but the filming went on for a long time.  She had a nice part with much dialog.  She recalls working out in the Pasadena area in a big house.  One thing that bothered her was seeing some fellow actresses stealing property from the house that was rented for the film, items like hair dryers, which were not the property of the production.  Mom hated to see this stealing! 
 
She didn’t receive her pay, and was starting to get impatient and worried.  She then met the man of her dreams she would marry, Robert Winckler, a successful entertainment attorney who had been a famous child actor in Hollywood.  They became engaged, and Mom decided to quit acting/showbiz entirely.  Timothy finally paid Mom for all her work, after the California Labor Commissioner looked into the matter for her, and later, Timothy apologized and asked my mother to come back and finish the movie.  Her now husband, Robert Winckler, actually encouraged her to do it, finding nothing wrong with her returning to finish The World’s Greatest Sinner, but Mom just wanted to focus on raising her new family and spending her life as her husband’s wife.  She politely declined Timothy’s offer.  As a result, many of the scenes with Betty Sturm were cut from the final release print, except for some, including the infamous emotional scene where Betty, as God’s follower, emotionally cries, breaking down in his arms, as Timothy himself cries, acting distraught, consoling her.  It’s a powerful scene.    
 
She finds it amazing that people still remember The World’s Greatest Sinner and that fans love and remember her performance. 
Betty Sturm in "The World's Greatest Sinner"

Quote of the Week

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Of course we’re here to see Carey shake and rattle like a Santeria shaman, and that’s what he does. He’s also sweet and fatherly at times–nervously maniacal at others. His truck with deviltry has the same desperate ring as it does for Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT or Captain Cutshaw in THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, men who rant and rage against God the way I rage at the stupidity of car commercials.

A weird-talking method maniac in general, Carey here has the weary look of someone who’s not only starring in but directing a low budget film, and that’s much more difficult than you would think (you’re basically the whole crew). He appears exhausted in some scenes and exhausted to the point of elation in others; the rest of the time he’s… just perfect, gamboling into brilliant oration ala Willie Stark in ALL THE KING’S MEN. Joy aboundeth, as does surprise bits of tenderness: he loves his horse and regards all humans with a sleepy naturalistic affection. I especially like how he calls everybody “deah”–as in “No, my deah, you don’t need insurance”–and there’s plenty of time for him to nuzzle with his wife and menagerie (he also has a snake and a big Marmaduke of a dog).

His new religion is never quite fleshed out (just how is he going to make everyone immortal?) but it’s worth playing along, humoring his conceits, just to watch him make out with old rich ladies for their money and– most of all–to shake his flabby frame on stage during his frenzied rock orations: half in a voodoo trance, half Corman-esque beatnik (his assistant urges him to glue on a fake goatee because it makes him look “better”) channeling ELMER GANTRY, he’s dynamite.

Hmmm, come to think of it – Robert Duvall produced THE APOSTLE and there’s some similarity. I totally support actors who want to get their megalomaniacal desire to be adored and adulated out onscreen and have the balls to go for it all the way, rather than sublimating and subtextualizing and cuddling it down like Kevins Spacey and Costner and of course Robin Williams.

That’s the difference between the real nuts and those who just pursue nuttiness the way a man with no mouth pursues a glass of water. If it all boils down to love, it’s the difference between those who love you and those who want you to love them. Tim Carey wants to love you through this film, if he had his way he’d pull you into the celluloid and start making out with you. I think he French kisses just about everyone and everything in this movie, but he does it out of love and so it’s pure. Do you hear me, Kevins?? PURE!!!!! Those who want to live forever must do so through othehs.  As Carey puts it in the film “you are all Gods, and ya gonna live foreva…”

 I can’t watch the whole mess in one sitting, but I believe he means it.

– Erich Kuersten, “As a Sinner He’s a Winner: The CITIZEN KANE of Timothy Carey,” Acidemic, October 27, 2008

SINNER ad

Timothy makes out with his wife Doris in the famous Sinner ad

Quote of the Week

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All of Carey’s collected stories to this point are borne of the humility of working class underdogs who dream of artistic expression. There’s Menudo, the 52-year-old Mexican singing cowboy from his teleplay, My Casa Is Yours, who still wants to become a pro soccer player. There’s the title character in Fiore – written with his wife, Doris – a car wash attendant who plays detective in a local murder/necrophilia case to win the reward money for a girl’s art school tuition. In Commercials, another teleplay written with his wife, an ad exec teams up with an anti-establishment, dog-loving street entertainer. Then there’s songwriter Cass Matthews from Greenwood, who finances his 25,000 acres of alligator sanctuary by recording hit pop records in Memphis.

All of these characters constitute a clear autobiography, embarking on impossible schemes, risking public ridicule and physical injury in pursuit of their personal ideals, and none more so than Carey’s alter-ego, The Insect Trainer‘s main character, Guasti Q. Guasti. Guasti represents all of Carey’s loneliness throughout his career, directly tied to the rejection he repeatedly faced amongst those whose art he shared. The booting off of location sets, the months spent developing a character only to be whittled down to a few moments by the time it hit the big screen, doing a screen test and not getting called because someone easier to work with would come in and use Carey’s test as a primer, having idea after idea shot down…these are the elements that went into creating Guasti.

– Ara Corbett, “Rebels With a Cause: The Timothy Carey – John Cassavetes Partnership,” Filmfax magazine #56 (May/June 1996)

Quote of the Week

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Today’s quote is not exactly a quote. It’s The Vagabond, a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. Timothy’s character Morgan Morgan recites parts of it in John Cassavetes‘ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). It also turns up in Fiore (1982), the screenplay that Tim wrote with his wife Doris. I think it expresses a side of his psyche that he rarely got to indulge. I truly believe Timothy was a gypsy at heart.

The Vagabond

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river –
There’s the life for a man like me,
There’s the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.

Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger.
White as meal the frosty field –
Warm the fireside haven –
Not to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o’er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.

Minnie and Moskowitz

As Morgan Morgan, Minnie and Moskowitz

Gypsy Traders (1953)

In the Cowboy G-Men episode “Gypsy Traders” (1953), with Charlita

Pic of the Day: The Carey Family

Posted by Marisa on

It’s Valentine’s Day, and that means love. This delightful picture of Timothy, his wife Doris, and their six children appeared in the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand, Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).

Today is also the birthday of Tim’s daughter Germain, the baby of the family and, as she will tell you, “the adorable one” in this photo! Happy birthday, Germain!