Kenneth Donovan Clark (June 4, 1927 – June 1, 2009) was an American actor. He was best known as a leading man in Italian B movies, including the Secret Agent 077 trilogy and a number of Spaghetti Westerns.
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Early life
Clark was born in Neffs, Ohio. He enlisted in the Navy when he was 17, and after being honorably discharged, he sought a career as an actor. When that effort was unsuccessful, he found employment as a model and as a construction worker. He also worked as a coal miner in the mid 1950s near Cadiz.
After moving to Los Angeles, he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Career
Early career
Clark was originally contracted to 20th Century Fox. While working for that studio, he acquired a reputation as a "beefcake" actor similar to Richard Egan. He appeared in a variety of genres of film, including crime (Six Bridges to Cross), Western (The Last Wagon), and war film (Between Heaven and Hell). Additionally, in one of his final roles for Fox, he appeared in Elvis Presley's debut motion picture, Love Me Tender. Fox dropped Clark following that picture, and his roles in the following years were often in lower-budget films.
Clark's most prominent role in American film came in 1958, when he was cast as Stewpot in South Pacific, an adaptation of the Broadway musical. His singing vocals were dubbed by Thurl Ravenscroft. Following the film's premiere, the New York Times described Clark's character as a "raffish gob."
During this period, Clark made many guest star appearances on a variety of American TV shows, including four appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1958 he appeared on Death Valley Days S6 E15 "Yankee Pirate" as the pirate Joseph Chapman. In 1959, he made an unsold private investigator TV pilot for a William Campbell Gault-inspired mystery series entitled Brock Callahan, directed by Don Siegel and written by Stirling Silliphant. That same year, he made a guest appearance in an episode of Western TV series Colt .45. During this period Clark had the lead in Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) and 12 to the Moon (1960). The former is regarded by some as Clark's "most memorable film."
1960s: Agent 077
During the 1960s and 1970s, like many other American actors Clark went to Italy appearing in several sword and sandal films, Spaghetti Westerns and Eurospy films, including the Hercules film The Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness, starring fellow American actor Dan Vadis, in 1963.
In 1965, Clark originated the role of Secret Agent Dick Mallory in the Agent 077 trilogy modeled on James Bond. In one of the pictures from that trilogy, From the East with Fury, Mallory seeks to rescue a kidnapped nuclear scientist.
1970s: Westerns
In 1971, Clark appeared alongside James Garner in A Man Called Sledge.
Personal life
Clark was married to Bette Lola (Kruger) Blatt, a widow with a young daughter. They went on to have five children together and separated when he left for Europe to continue his acting career. Bette died in 1980.
Death
According to fellow actor Robert Woods, Clark died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy on June 1, 2009, three days before his 82nd birthday, shortly after a taping for a program on the mid-1960s Eurospy genre on the TV series Starcult.
Partial filmography
Adapted from IMDb and TV Guide.
