What Happened To Michele Carey? The El Dorado Star Who Shot John Wayne, Kissed Elvis, and Vanished

By the third "Mr Wayne," John Wayne had had enough.

He stopped. Turned. Fixed those famous eyes on the 24-year-old actress who was being way too polite on her first day.

"It's Duke. Or nothing."

Michele Carey nearly dropped her prop rifle laughing. First day on El Dorado, and she'd already learned the most important rule: nobody called him Mr Wayne.

The crew burst out laughing. Michele nearly dropped her prop rifle. No more nerves after that. Just Duke, who'd tip his hat every time she said his name: "That's better, darlin'."

In 1965, Michele Carey had just landed the role that would make her famous—Joey MacDonald in Howard Hawks' Western, shooting John Wayne and messing around with James Caan. Three years later she'd kiss Elvis Presley on screen. She'd double-date with Angie Dickinson at Clint Eastwood's restaurant. Fan mail arrived from Japan, from Germany, from places she'd never been.

Then she disappeared.

Not slowly. Not tragically. She just... stopped. At 44, with steady work and A-list friends and a recognisable face, Michele Carey walked away from Hollywood and didn't look back for 32 years.

This wasn't failure. This was choice. And nobody knows why.

The Piano Prodigy Who Chose Hollywood Over Carnegie Hall

Summer of 1955. Chicago. A 13-year-old girl walks onto a stage to perform the Paganini Variations.

If you know anything about piano, you know that piece is brutal. Hard doesn't cover it—this is the kind of music that separates the talented from the truly great. The kind of piece adult concert pianists spend months preparing.

Michele was 13.

She won gold.

Then she played an encore. Outdoors, in the middle of Soldier Field, looking impossibly small on that massive stage. Her family's obituary would later describe it simply: the performance "brought down the house."

This wasn't some kid who was good at piano. Born Michele Lee Henson on 26th February 1942 in Annapolis, Maryland, she'd already performed with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra. She'd appeared on live television in Minneapolis, playing duets with her mother Thelma. At 13, Michele Carey had the world of classical music wide open.

She walked away from it.

Her childhood was constant motion. Her father, Stanley Willard Henson Jr, was a three-time NCAA wrestling champion—56 wins, 1 loss—who worked as wrestling instructor at the US Naval Academy before joining active duty during the war. After the war ended he went to medical school. University of Maryland, then Mayo Clinic, training to be a surgeon. He finally settled in Fort Collins, Colorado, becoming the city's first open-heart surgeon.

He'd live to 101, dying in 2018 as the oldest living NCAA wrestling champion.

So Michele grew up everywhere. Maryland. Oklahoma with her mother and grandparents whilst Dad was overseas. Minnesota. Finally Colorado. Through all those relocations, two things stayed constant: her love of daydreaming and ice-skating and her dog Champ, and that extraordinary talent at the piano.

As a teenager in Colorado, her father bought her a horse. Everyone else thought it was wild, unbroken, impossible. Michele rode it. Her obituary notes, with typical family understatement: "Perhaps no one else could have."

Then came the thing her family wouldn't discover until it was too late.

Whilst attending Fort Collins High School, Michele fell in love. Got married. Had a baby. She was 17 years old when her son Kevin Troy Schwanke was born on 21st June 1960, weeks after graduation.

The marriage didn't last. Suddenly Michele was a single mother in 1960—the kind of situation that typically ended dreams before they started.

She looked at her options and made a decision that would have seemed insane: Hollywood.

From Colorado to Hollywood in 18 Months

1964: Michele signed with John Robert Powers modelling agency and moved to Los Angeles with four-year-old Kevin. She was 22, single, broke, connected to absolutely nobody.

She had her looks—that striking face, the long wild hair that became her trademark. And she had something harder to define: a complete inability to accept that doors were closed.

The modelling work came fast. Within months she'd caught Hollywood's attention. Her first TV role came that same year—a receptionist on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Uncredited. Forgettable. The kind of part where a thousand actresses disappear forever.

Michele wasn't staying in the background.

The apartment building she moved into turned out to matter. Her neighbour was Susan Oliver, an actress whose career was taking off—she'd just been cast as Hank Williams' wife in Your Cheatin' Heart. Susan became a friend, sometimes watching young Kevin when Michele had auditions.

Another neighbour: Wolfman Jack. He'd record his radio shows in LA, then someone would drive the tapes to a massive transmitter station in Mexico. That signal was so powerful it reached from coast to coast—New York, Canada, everywhere. As a favour, Michele and Susan recorded fake "fan" phone calls for his show, using what friends called their "wonderfully sexy voices" to tell the Wolfman how much they loved him. Those recordings aired. Years later Michele would do legitimate voice work for Wolfman Jack's syndicated programme, but those early calls—wherever they are now—prove she understood something crucial about Hollywood: it wasn't just about talent. It was about being game for anything, making connections, never taking yourself too seriously.

That summer she met Earl Holliman in the park, watching guys play touch football. Holliman was already established—he'd appeared in the very first Twilight Zone episode, beaten Elvis for a role in The Rainmaker, starred with John Wayne in Sons of Katie Elder.

They'd be friends for 50 years. Volunteering together for animal rights causes, playing on charity golf teams, serving Christmas meals to the homeless at LA Mission.

When Holliman died in 2025 at 96, he'd been Michele's friend longer than most marriages last.

But the connection that changed everything came in 1965.

Howard Hawks cast her in El Dorado.

"It's Duke. Or Nothing."

El Dorado was Hawks following up his hit Rio Bravo—basically the same story with an aging gunfighter helping a drunk sheriff defend a town. Hawks was 69. Wayne was 58, clearly slowing down. The script even mentioned it, giving Wayne's character an injury early on.

Into this world of aging legends walked Michele Carey as Josephine "Joey" MacDonald. Tough. Shoots a rifle. She shoots Wayne's character and later messes around with James Caan's Mississippi.

Small role. Memorable.

October 1965 to January 1966, filming in Old Tucson, Arizona, and around Kanab, Utah. That "Duke or nothing" moment wasn't just funny—it was Wayne putting a nervous young actress at ease, treating her like the professional she was determined to be.

Michele's work ethic was straightforward: "I was told to be ready at 4:00 AM for the limo ride to the studio for make-up. I was ready, and I knew my lines." No drama. No excuses. No starlet behaviour. Show up prepared, do the work.

The film wrapped early 1966 but sat on the shelf so it wouldn't compete with Steve McQueen's Nevada Smith. Finally premiered in Japan, 17th December 1966. US release: 7th June 1967.

Critics loved it. Roger Ebert: three and a half stars, "a tightly directed, humorous, altogether successful Western." Eventually 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. $12 million box office.

Michele Carey was 25 and officially arrived.

During the promotional tour she returned to Fort Collins. The city named her Honorary Mayor for a day—"all the perks of being mayor but none of the responsibilities," as she'd joke. Triumphant homecoming. The teenage mother who'd left Colorado had returned a film star.

Elvis, Sinatra, and the Career That Should Have Been

1968: Live a Little, Love a Little with Elvis Presley. Michele played Bernice, a quirky artist opposite the King of Rock and Roll.

What happened on set went beyond just making a movie. Michele loved jazz, loved all kinds of music. Elvis was curious about what other people listened to. Between scenes they'd talk—favourite artists, songs that hit them hard, the music that actually mattered.

These weren't fake Hollywood conversations. Elvis was, in Michele's memory, really interested, really kind. Someone who listened and wanted people to share what they cared about. In Hollywood's world of fake friendships and career moves, those moments were real.

That same year: The Sweet Ride with Jacqueline Bisset, playing Thumper Stevens.

Then came the phone call that would haunt her for decades...

The Role That Got Away

Summer 1968. John Wayne called.

He was preparing True Grit—playing Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed, hard-drinking US Marshal. The role that would become iconic, that would finally win him his only Oscar. But he had a problem with Mattie Ross, the 14-year-old girl who hires Cogburn to track her father's killer.

First they cast Mia Farrow. Wayne was unhappy. They replaced her with Kim Darby. Wayne was, according to friends, "extremely unhappy."

He wanted someone he trusted. Someone he'd worked with. Someone who could hold their own opposite him.

He wanted Michele.

She was under contract. Committed to Changes and several TV shows. The timing was impossible. She couldn't even audition.

Michele would list this as one of the deepest regrets of her life. She really liked Wayne—not just as Duke the movie star, but as a person. And True Grit became one of the most beloved Westerns ever made, the film that finally earned Wayne his Oscar. Kim Darby's performance was fine, professional, perfectly adequate.

But you can't help wondering what Michele might have brought to it. What chemistry she and Duke might have created in their second film together.

Contracts are contracts. She honoured hers, filmed Changes—a critically acclaimed Hall Bartlett production with Kent Lane—and watched someone else ride into film history.

Footnote: Elvis Presley was wanted for the Glen Campbell role. But Colonel Parker demanded Elvis get top billing over John Wayne. That was never happening, so Elvis lost what might have been his first serious dramatic role.

1970: Dirty Dingus Magee opposite Frank Sinatra.

She played Anna Hot Water, an Indian girl in a miniskirt (yes, really) in a comedy Western. Eye-candy role, but it put her on screen with another legend.

She was working constantly. Mission: Impossible. The Wild Wild West. It Takes a Thief. The F.B.I. Every major show from that era, Michele probably appeared at least once. Steady career. Recognisable face. The kind of working-actress trajectory most people in Hollywood would kill for.

The Slow Fade

After 1970, things shifted. Fewer films. More television. Guest spots instead of bigger roles. B-movies instead of studio pictures.

1972: Title role in a Gunsmoke episode, "Tara."

1973: The second Six Million Dollar Man pilot, Wine, Women and War, working with Earl Holliman. On that set, Holliman told her to audition for a new series called Police Woman. Angie Dickinson—who Michele had just worked with on The Norliss Tapes—would get the lead. Angie would also set Michele up with her second husband on a double date in Carmel, at Clint Eastwood's restaurant, the Hog's Breath Inn.

These connections show Michele was still part of Hollywood's inner circle, still friends with the A-list crowd. She wasn't being rejected. But the path had changed. Rising star to working actress.

1979-1980: The sultry computer voice in A Man Called Sloane. Recurring role, good pay, minimal time commitment.

1982: Crystal in an episode of The Fall Guy.

Then silence.

1986: In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro. Horror film. She played Ginny Hansen.

Final credit. She was 44.

Michele Carey disappeared.

The 32 Years of Silence

1990s: Michele moved to New Mexico, opened an antique store. Brief marriage to a businessman there—her third, after the teenage marriage that produced Kevin and a second marriage in the early '70s to a man who adopted him. Like the others, it didn't last.

1999: She married Fred G. Strebel, a businessman. Hillsborough and Rancho Mirage, California. This one was different. Twelve years until Fred's death, 28th December 2011.

During these years she became something unexpected: successful in real estate. Working with partner Deryl L. Nation—a master at making cabinets—she bought and fixed up houses in Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Malibu. Buy beat-up homes, Deryl builds custom cabinets, Michele adds her style. Suddenly the house is the best one on the block.

She also worked as a realtor, reportedly becoming one of the best agents along the California coast between San Diego and LA.

This wasn't a hobby. This was a real second career, really successful.

But here's the strange part: she never used her Hollywood past. Didn't drop names. Didn't mention working with Wayne and Elvis. She kept her 50-year friendships—Earl Holliman and animal rights work, Christmas meals at LA Mission, golf tournaments. Close with Lynne and Jerry Ostrow of Beverly Hills, called her "dearest friends" in her obituary.

Still receiving fan mail from around the world until she died. People hadn't forgotten.

She'd just chosen a life outside the spotlight and maintained that choice with remarkable consistency for three decades.

The Woman Who Refused to Fly

11th September 2001. Michele Carey made a decision: never flying again.

She'd always feared it. The terrorist attacks were the final straw. Problem: her parents were still in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her father—the wrestling champion turned surgeon—was aging. She wanted to see them.

So she drove. Newport Beach to Fort Collins. Sixteen hours. Over a thousand miles.

Through desert, past Las Vegas, into Utah mountains, through the Eisenhower Tunnel (highest vehicular tunnel in North America), along Interstate 70 with its views of the Rockies, the Continental Divide, the Tenmile Range, the Gore Range. She'd stop midway in Richfield, Utah—population 8,100—at a Holiday Inn Express.

She loved that drive.

After Fred died in 2011, Michele kept going. Alone. In her seventies. Family and friends begged her not to drive solo. Sometimes she'd bring her brothers, or close friends. Often she'd make that 16-hour drive by herself.

It's almost obsessive—this refusal to let age or fear or common sense stop her. But it's also kind of beautiful. That was the same route her father had driven in 1964, taking Michele, baby Kevin, and her sister Janine to Los Angeles along parts of Interstate 70 still being built. The route that brought her to Hollywood. Now the route that brought her home.

Last trip: February 2018. Through snow-covered mountains. Her father's funeral.

Stanley Willard Henson Jr died 30th January 2018, age 101. The oldest living NCAA wrestling champion.

Michele would return to Fort Collins one more time that year.

But she wouldn't be driving.

Three Losses in Thirteen Months

Kevin died first.

Kevin Troy Schwanke. The baby she'd had at 17. The child she'd brought to Hollywood. Died 11th November 2017, age 57, in La Quinta, California. Cause of death: never made public. He left three children—Michele's grandchildren—and two great-grandchildren.

Three months later, her father.

Then, 21st November 2018, Michele Carey died of natural causes at her home in Newport Beach. She was 76. One source specified coronary event.

The final words in her obituary are:

We remember Michele for her beauty, her love of life, and her generous “can do” spirit. These are Michele’s words and her mantra from a script she once wrote: “Between the first tear and the last smile, let’s live for the time we’re alive.”

Thirteen months. Her only child. Her father. Herself.

Private ceremony, 2nd December 2018. Grandview Cemetery, Fort Collins. Alongside her parents.

Final journey on that same route she'd driven so many times.

Much of the personal detail in this article—the "Duke or nothing" story, Michele's True Grit regret, her music conversations with Elvis, the post-9/11 driving obsession—comes from the Michele Carey memorial Facebook page, which has preserved memories found nowhere else. Without this page, these moments would have been lost to time.

Michele Carey got fan mail from around the world until the day she died. People remembered Joey MacDonald shooting John Wayne in El Dorado*, remembered her kissing Elvis, remembered that wild hair and that "can do" spirit her family talked about. They wanted to know where she'd gone, why she'd left, what had happened to her.*

She chose not to tell them.

Michele Carey lived three amazing careers—piano virtuoso, Hollywood actress, successful businesswoman—and walked away from two of them at their peak. She kept 50-year friendships with Hollywood legends whilst living completely privately. She drove 16 hours alone in her seventies because she refused to fly.

She lived exactly the life she wanted, on her own terms, and never explained herself to anyone.

Not a bad legacy for the girl who won gold at Soldier Field, then walked away from that too.