Lon Clark
Encyclopedia
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
of stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and radio.
As a youth in Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, Clark studied at the MacPhail Center for Music
MacPhail Center for Music
The MacPhail Center for Music is a nonprofit music school in a recently opened building in the Mills District of Downtown East, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school has over 7,750 students, providing instruction at 48 locations outside of its downtown Minneapolis facility on more than 35 instruments...
in Minneapolis. He began as a musician and actor in traveling tent shows, followed by a season with the Cincinnati Summer Opera. After participating in radio drama in Cincinnati, he arrived in New York during the 1940s, and his rich baritone voice quickly led to network radio roles.
Radio
He had the title role in Nick Carter, Master DetectiveNick Carter, Master Detective
Nick Carter, Master Detective was a Mutual radio crime drama based on tales of the famed detective from Street & Smith's dime novels and pulp magazines. Nick Carter first came to radio as The Return of Nick Carter, a reference to the character's pulp origins, but the title was soon changed to Nick...
on the Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
from 1943 to 1955. The Nick Carter scripts were by Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books...
and others.
Clark also a familiar voice on such programs as the frontier serial adventure Wilderness Road, the WWII dramas Words at War (1943–45) and Soldiers of the Press (1942–45), the quiz show Quick as a Flash, the soap opera Bright Horizon, the science fiction series 2000 Plus
2000 Plus
----2000 Plus was an American old-time radio series that ran on the Mutual Broadcasting System from March 15, 1950 to January 2, 1952 in various 30-minute time slots...
and Exploring Tomorrow, Lights Out
Lights Out (radio show)
Lights Out is an extremely popular American old-time radio program, an early example of a network series devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum...
, The Mysterious Traveler
The Mysterious Traveler
The Mysterious Traveler was an anthology radio series, a magazine and a comic book. All three featured stories which ran the gamut from fantasy and science fiction to straight crime dramas of mystery and suspense.-Radio:...
, The Kate Smith Hour
Kate Smith
Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was an American Popular singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia...
, The March of Time
The March of Time
The March of Time is a radio series, and companion newsreel series, that was broadcast on CBS from 1931 to 1945 and shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. It was created by Time, Inc. executive Roy Edward Larsen, and was produced and written by Louis de Rochemont and his brother Richard de...
, The Adventures of the Thin Man
The Adventures of the Thin Man
The Adventures of the Thin Man radio series, initially starring Les Damon, was broadcast on all four major radio networks during the years 1941 to 1950. Claudia Morgan had the female lead role of Nora Charles throughout the program's entire nine-year run...
and Norman Corwin Presents
Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...
, playing opposite such performers as Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...
, Art Carney
Art Carney
Arthur William Matthew “Art” Carney was an American actor in film, stage, television and radio. He is best known for playing Ed Norton, opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the situation comedy The Honeymooners....
, Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
and Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
.
Broadway
Clark returned to the stage in his later years, replacing Jason RobardsJason Robards
Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. was an American actor on stage, and in film and television, and a winner of the Tony Award , two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award...
in the 1956 Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's Long Day's Journey into Night
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Long Day's Journey Into Night is a 1956 drama in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play is widely considered to be his masterwork...
. He was back on Broadway in the short run of Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...
's Roman Candle with Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens was a Swedish-American movie and TV actress.- Early life :Inger Stevens was born Inger Stensland in Stockholm, Sweden. She was an insecure child and was often ill. When she was nine, her parents divorced and she moved with her father to New York City...
and Julia Meade.
He was 86 when he died at St. Clare's Hospital in Manhattan, survived by his wife, Michelle Trudeau Clark; two sons, Lon Jr. and Stephen, both of San Francisco; a brother, Gerald, of Plymouth, Minnesota
Plymouth, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 65,894 people, 24,820 households, and 17,647 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,002.0 persons per square mile . There were 25,258 housing units at an average density of 767.4 per square mile...
; and a grandson.