Michele Carey, Actress in ‘El Dorado’ and ‘Live a Little, Love a Little,’ Dies at 75
The Hollywood Reporter 12/3/2018 by Mike Barnes
Michele Carey, the attractive actress who starred alongside John Wayne in El Dorado and with Elvis Presley in Live a Little, Love a Little, has died. She was 75.
Known for her wild, brunette mane, the blue-eyed actress portrayed an adult film star who is dating a beatnik (Bob Denver) in The Sweet Ride (1968) and was a Native American woman named Anna Hot Water in Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), starring Frank Sinatra.
In El Dorado (1967), legendary director Howard Hawks’ penultimate film, Carey played the rebellious Josephine “Joey” MacDonald; she shoots Wayne’s Cole Thornton and rolls around in the hay with James Caan’s character, a man named Mississippi.
Carey then portrayed the eccentric artist Bernice, who changes her name to fit her many moods, in Live a Little, Love a Little (1968). Presley is a photographer who frantically juggles two jobs in the film.
Carey also wore a kimono in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) and appeared in other films including In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro (1986), after which she retired from acting.
Carey was born on Feb. 26, 1943, in Annapolis, Maryland, where her father worked as a wrestling instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy. She was raised in Minnesota and Colorado and graduated from Fort Collins High School in 1960.
Carey worked as a Powers model and at age 21 arrived in Los Angeles, where she made her onscreen debut in 1964 in a first-season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
24 Femmes Per Second 