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Fred Clark

American film and television character actor (1914-1968)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ2484213
Source-derived summary

Frederick Leonard Clark (March 19, 1914 – December 5, 1968) was an American movie and television character actor, often playing in authoritative roles.

Early years

Clark was born in Lincoln, California, the son of Fred Clark Sr. He attended Stanford University, with plans to become a doctor, but participation with a college production of Yellow Jack diverted his attention to acting. He changed his major to drama and later received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, he was elected his class's most promising actor.

Career

Among his movies were Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948), Flamingo Road (1949), White Heat (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Auntie Mame (1958), and Visit to a Small Planet (1960).

Although he continued performing in movies during the 1960s (including a role in Hammer Film Productions' The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb in 1964 and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home in 1965) he performed more often for television, as a regular on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show as neighbor Harry Morton (until 1953), and guest roles for The Twilight Zone, The Beverly Hillbillies, Going My Way, The Addams Family, and I Dream of Jeannie. In 1962, he and Bea Benaderet, another Burns and Allen veteran, played Mr. and Mrs.

Editorial summary

“Fred Clark” enters the record as american film and television character actor (1914-1968). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fred, Clark and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 1968, 1947, 1948—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914-03-19. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Fred, Clark and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Fred Clark” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fred, Clark and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2484213. VIAF identifies the subject as 54356302. The Library of Congress control number is no91020888. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1968, 1947 and 1948.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fred Clark”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fred Clark primary sources, Fred Clark archive and Fred research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fred Clark”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Fred Clark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.