Harry Carey Jr., the actor once synonymous with the Western films of old Hollywood, has died at his home aged 91. He died of natural causes.

The actor appeared in many films and television shows throughout his career, which spanned six decades and saw him in over 150 titles, and is perhaps known best for the nine films he made with famed movie director John Ford, usually alongside fellow Western icon John Wayne. As the decades progressed he also featured in such blockbusters as Back to the Future III and Gremlins, but it is his role in the classic Hollywood Westerns of yore that has engraved his name onto popular memory.

He passed of natural causes surrounded by his family at his seaside home in Santa Barbara, California, with his daughter, Melinda Carey, telling the press following his death: "No cancer or nothing, he just got old," she said of her father.

Carey grew up around films and was always destined for a career in front of the camera. He was born in 1921, the son of silent film star Harry Carey and his wife, Olive, who also was an actress, and flirted with the Tinseltown crowd from his early years before beginning his acting career in 1946.  He had previously worked with Ford during World War II making propaganda films.

Given nickname 'Dobe,' short for adobe, in reference to the colour of his hair and the plains of the ranch he lived on as a boy, the actor is survived by his wife Marilyn Carey, with whom he was married to for 68 years, and their four children.