Timothy Carey

Timothy Carey had one of the most unusual careers of all Hollywood character actors, obtaining full cult status for his portrayals of the doomed, the psychotic and the plain crazy. Carey's career was an "only in America" type of story, and he retains his status as a great American original many years after his death. As a 22-year-old acting school graduate, Carey made his film debut in 1951, as a corpse in a Clark Gable western, but it was his brief, uncredited part as Chino, a member of Lee Marvin's motorcycle gang The Beetles in The Wild One (1953) which made an impression, and was a harbinger of the unsavory characters to come. Prone to improvising, it was the fearless Carey who came up with the idea of squirting beer in Marlon Brando's face, even though the great methods actor himself had expressed reservations about what Carey was up to. Carey registered the same year as the bordello bouncer who threatens James Dean in East of Eden (1955), making his face, if not his name (he w