Mae Clarke

Mae Clarke (born Violet Mary Klotz; August 16, 1910 – April 29, 1992) was an American actress. She is widely remembered for playing Henry Frankenstein's bride Elizabeth, who is chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and for being on the receiving end of James Cagney's halved grapefruit in The Public Enemy.[3] Both films were released in 1931.

For those of a similar name, see May Clarke (disambiguation).

Mae Clarke
Clarke in 1932
Born
Violet Mary Klotz

(1910-08-16)August 16, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedApril 29, 1992(1992-04-29) (aged 81)
Woodland Hills, California, U.S.
Resting placeValhalla Memorial Park Cemetery
Occupation(s)Actress, singer
Years active1926–1970
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1928; div. 1930)​
    Stevens Bancroft
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1937; div. 1940)​
    • Herbert Langdon
      (m. 1946; div. 1947 or 1948)[1][2]

    Early life

    Mae Clarke was born in Philadelphia.[4] Her father was a theater organist. She studied dancing as a child and began on stage in vaudeville and also worked in night clubs.[5]

    Career

    Clarke started her professional career as a dancer in New York City, sharing a room with Barbara Stanwyck.[6] She starred in many films for Universal Studios, including the original screen version of The Front Page (1931) and the first sound version of Frankenstein (1931), with Boris Karloff. Clarke played the role of Elizabeth, Henry Frankenstein's fiancée, who is attacked by the Monster (Karloff) on her wedding day.

    The Public Enemy, released that same year, contained one of cinema's more famous (and frequently parodied) scenes, in which James Cagney pushes a half grapefruit into Clarke's face, then goes out to pick up Jean Harlow.[7]

    Cagney, in striped pajamas, looks angry as he reaches across a breakfast table with the grapefruit in his hand.
    Cagney mashes a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in a famous scene from Cagney's breakthrough movie, The Public Enemy (1931)

    The film was so popular that it ran 24 hours per day at a theater in Times Square upon its initial release; four months after the premiere, The Hollywood Reporter informed readers that Clarke's ex-husband Lew Brice claimed to have seen the film more than 20 times (and at least twice per week) and that Brice "says he goes to see the scene wherein Mae Clarke gets hit in the eye with a grapefruit—and that it's a plazure!"[8][lower-alpha 1]

    Clarke appeared as Myra Deauville in the 1931 pre-Code version of Waterloo Bridge. In the film, she portrays a young American woman who is forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution in World War I London; both the film and Clarke's performance were well received by the critics.[3]

    Frame from trailer for Lady Killer (1933)

    Clarke also appeared in the modest pre-Code Universal film Night World (1932), with Lew Ayres, Boris Karloff, Hedda Hopper, and George Raft. In 1933, she was the female lead in Fast Workers, John Gilbert's last film as a contracted MGM star, and Lady Killer with James Cagney and Margaret Lindsay. The same year, she and actor Phillips Holmes were in a single-car accident that left Clarke with a broken jaw and facial scarring.[11] Those injuries, however, did not end her film career, for she remained a leading lady for most of the 1930s. She was, though, increasingly cast in productions with lower budgets that lacked the status of her earlier films. Then, by 1940, Clarke slipped into supporting roles, although she did have a few last leading roles later in the decade, notably as the heroine in the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men (1949). In the 1950s and 1960s, Clarke played uncredited bit parts in several notable films, including Singin' in the Rain, The Great Caruso, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.[3] Her last screen appearance was in the 1970 film Watermelon Man.[3]

    Clarke with fellow actor John Beradino in the daytime drama General Hospital (1963)

    On television, Clarke appeared in many episodic series, including General Hospital, Perry Mason and Batman. Clarke retired in 1970 and taught drama.[3]

    Personal life and death

    Clarke was married and divorced three times: to Fanny Brice's brother Lew Brice,[12] Stevens Bancroft,[13] and Herbert Langdon.[14][15] All of the unions were childless.[16]

    In later years Clarke resided at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.[17] Clarke died from cancer on April 29, 1992 at age 81.[11] She is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.[11]

    Selected filmography

    Features

    Short subjects
    • Screen Snapshots (1932, Documentary short) - Herself
    • Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 7 (1937, Documentary short) - Herself

    Notes
    1. In an article published in Variety more than two years after the film's release, Brice's total number of claimed viewings had somehow dwindled to eight.[9] In James Cagney's 1976 autobiography, he claims that Clarke's disgruntled ex—mistakenly dubbed Monte Brice—soon had the grapefruit scene timed so as to arrive shortly beforehand and depart immediately thereafter.[10]

    References

    Bibliography

    • Cagney, James. Cagney by Cagney. New York: Doubleday, 1976. ISBN 978-0385520263.
    • Clarke, Mae. Featured Player: An Oral Autobiography of Mae Clarke; Edited With An Introduction by James Curtis. Santa Barbara: Santa Teresa Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0810830448.
    • Goldman, Herbert G. Fanny Brice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-19-535901-5.
    • Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell's Filmgoers Companion (Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies). New York: Collins Reference, 1997. ISBN 978-0062734785.
    • Madsen, Axel. Stanwyck: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. ISBN 0-06-017997-X.

    Footnotes

    1. Kilgallen, Dorothy (September 11, 1947). "Voice of Broadway". Mansfield News Journal. p. 9. "Mae Clarke, the actress who rose to fame when Jimmy Cagney massaged her face with a grapefruit, has Reno in the bean-o. Her husband is Herbert Langdon." Retrieved July 21, 2022.
    2. Clarke, Mae; Curtis, James, ed. (1996). Featured Player: An Oral Autobiography of Mae Clarke. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. p. 222.
      Clarke: "We divorced quickly because I added everything up and said, 'I've got to get out of this if I'm going to get on with responsibility for my own survival.' I couldn't carry him as a load, and he wasn't going to help me any. I had to go, and he didn't mind letting me go. By then, I guess I wasn't too pretty. And we hadn't even gotten to know each other. It was a fast marriage to begin with, an emotional thing at the time of the war."
      Curtis: "You got back into films in the spring of 1948." ISBN 0-8108-3044-2.
    3. Folkart, Burt A.; Stassel, Stephanie (April 30, 1992). "Mae Clarke, Famed for Grapefruit Scene, Dies". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
    4. Mae Clarke at AllMovie
    5. Halliwell 1987, p. 130.
    6. Madsen 1994, pp. 16–17, 20.
    7. Clarke 1996, p. back cover.
    8. "Chivalry". The Hollywood Reporter. August 26, 1931. p. 1. ProQuest 2297350426.
    9. "Proxy Revenge". Variety. May 23, 1933. p. 7. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
    10. Cagney 1976, p. 45.
    11. Mank, Gregory William (May 17, 2005). Women in Horror Films, 1930s. McFarland. ISBN 9780786423347.
    12. Goldman 1992, pp. 136-7, 144.
    13. "Mae Clarke Wins Divorce". New York Herald Tribune. January 6, 1940. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
    14. Clarke 1996, p. 221.
    15. "Obituary". Variety. May 2, 1992. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
    16. Mank, Gregory William (2014). The Very Witching Time of Night: Dark Alleys of Classic Horror Cinema. McFarland. p. 371. ISBN 9780786449552.
    17. Green, Jesse; Mark, Mary Ellen (March 1991). "You Must Remember This". Premiere.

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