Biography
American actor Gary Clarke was born Clarke Frederic L'Amoreaux of French and Mexican ancestry. Raised in the predominantly Chicano neighbourhood of East Los Angeles, he was determined to become an actor by the time he attended high school. His first performing engagements were in community theatre in San Gabriel, followed by stage appearances in Glendale and drama studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. At the same time, Clarke made ends meet as a machine operator and newspaper delivery man.
He made his TV debut in 1957, followed by his first motion picture lead the following year in Dragstrip Riot (1958), a low budget AIP release which cashed in on the prevailing trend for youth-oriented car racing and biker gang pictures. Clarke alternated supporting roles with occasional leads in several other genre pictures: as a young horror movie actor, hypnotized and transformed by a vengeful make up artist into a homicidal lycanthrope in How to Make a Monster (1958); as one of two escaped convict stowaways in Missile to the Moon (1958), an inept, ultra-low budget remake of Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) (with even shoddier props and special effects); as a love-struck teen whose life is complicated by conservative parents, the bride-to-be's thuggish ex-boyfriend, a junkie brother and a likely gallery of assorted pushers and mobsters in Date Bait (1960); and as a college undergraduate bent on seducing a particularly hard-to-get sorority sister in the predictable teen comedy Wild Wild Winter (1966).
On TV, Clarke had a semi-regular role as Dick Hamilton, younger brother of Lucy, the secretary of private eye Michael Shayne (1960) (Richard Denning). This character was specifically created for the show and did not appear in the original novels by Brett Halliday. Perhaps thanks to his boyish face and easy-going personality, Clarke became an audience favourite as Steve Hill, a close buddy of the Trampas character (played by Doug McClure) during the first two seasons of the hit western series The Virginian (1962). When Hill was phased out in 1964, Clarke moved on to play an Arizona Territory cavalry officer in Hondo (1967) and made guest appearances in diverse shows and made-for-TV movies.
In 1966, he began surreptitiously submitting scripts for the NBC spy sitcom Get Smart (1965) as 'C. F. Lamoreaux', in the process creating the character of Hymie the Robot (played perfectly deadpan by Dick Gautier) in a set of six episodes. The show's creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, were well aware of this little subterfuge, but they liked his ideas. When Clarke eventually owned up that he had been an actor on The Virginian, their response was "we watch TV too".
Clarke continued through the 70s and 80s in occasional TV guest spots. He popped up several times as a police officer in Dynasty (1981) and played four different characters in The Young Riders (1989). He had a small role in the A-grade western Tombstone (1993), as U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake (1936-1890), the lawman who first deputized Virgil Earp. In Parkland (2013), he played Vice Admiral George Burkley (1902-1991), physician to three U.S. presidents, who was among those present during JFK's ill-fated Dallas motorcade.
Clarke has also briefly sidelined as a vocalist, releasing the single "Tomorrow May Never Come" (co-written by Jackie DeShannon) for RCA Victor in 1962, and a cover of the theme from The Virginian ("Lonesome Tree"), backed by "One Summer in a Million" for Decca Records in 1963.
Clarke's second wife (1964-70) was the actress Pat Woodell (best known as Bobbie Jo Bradley in TV's Petticoat Junction (1963)). He has been married since 1991 to Jerrene Beatty and is the father of two daughters. His hobbies have been said to be riding horses and motorcycles and playing golf.
