Hanging out with Phil Carey was like stepping into a night out in old Hollywood. You'd start an interview about something current happening on ONE LIFE TO LIVE and pretty soon he'd be quoting John Wayne and telling you to turn off the tape recorder. But every once in a while, he let me leave it on.

"Let me tell you something," Phil said in 2000. "All the big stars in Hollywood that I worked with, Jimmy Cagney, Henry Fonda, Duke Wayne, Gary Cooper, had something every actor needs when that lens hits you: humility. Cagney could do stuff as a heavy and you'd still like him. That's what I try to do with Asa." Born Eugene Joseph Carey in 1925, he fell into acting in his twenties. "[Studio head] Jack Warner came up and said, 'You gotta change your name.' I said, 'I don't think so. My mother would have a stroke.' 'Well, we already have Gene Kelly. I'm gonna give you a choice right now: Roger or Phillip.' Roger the dodger was all I could think about. I said, 'I'll take Phillip.' I called my mother. I almost had to go to confession."

He kept Eugene Joseph on his driver's license, though, because, "if you're a celebrity and you hit somebody, maybe they won't sue you."

After a successful career in movies and prime-time television, Carey was offered the role of crusty patriarch Asa Buchanan.

"Those were the days when you worked and it was just fun," he praised. "Clint, Bo and I would rehearse and the words just flowed. Pleasurable work. Good scenes. I told everybody, 'I'll rehearse until doomsday for you. You've got me as long as you want me.'"

He wasn't as keen on doing interviews, but this writer was able to crack him with some help from Bob Woods (Bo) and the late Clint Ritchie (Clint) at a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side during a raucous interview in the early 90s.

"I think talking into a tape recorder is like being in a prison," he believed. "If I ever wrote a book, I'd better be underground. I'll leave it for you and you can hold it until I die. Cause I've had some fun..."

Carey's later years were marred by ill health and lung cancer, but he never lost his sense of humor. "People stare at me in the hospital. I don't know if they're staring at me because I'm bald or I've stolen something." By his side through it all were his beloved wife Colleen, his kids, and an on-screen son who morphed into one of his best friends.

"There's nobody better than Bob," praised Carey. "He's just the best. He's smooth. He's quiet. He knows when and when not to be around. He's just a good man."

As for his last job, "ONE LIFE TO LIVE has been very good to me. Who knows what might have happened if it lasted one year, like it was supposed to?"

Asked at OLTL's 35th anniversary party if he would stick around for another 35 years, Carey responded, "The word right now is no. I'll be in a box somewhere. I just hope people come out once in awhile and put some flowers on it."

Check out Hinsey's article about Carey in the March 30, 1993 issue of Digest HERE.