Five Great Marlene Clark Guest Appearances

[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/fiv...t-appearances/

In a feature spotlighting character actors who routinely do strong guest appearances on TV series, Brian spotlights five fine TV performances by Marlene Clark.

Today, we look at five great guest appearances by Merlene Clark.

This is “Following a Star,” a new feature where I spotlight five great guest spots by an actor who frequently did/does guest spots on TV series in their careers. It doesn’t mean that they’ve NEVER been regulars on shows, but obviously I’m not looking to spotlight people who are best known for their regular TV roles (like no Jason Alexander or Florence Henderson, for instance).

Since this is Black History Month, I’ll specifically spotlight Black character actors this month.

Marlene Clark broke into show business as a fashion model. Her striking looks led to her starting an acting career, appearing in a number of films as basically a gorgeous background player (whose naivete would sometimes be taken advantage of by directors to get her to do topless scenes). She decided to start taking acting classes, and she began to get larger roles, but the films were generally the sort of cult classic stuff that while a select group of people loved it then and a lot more poeple love it now (like Ganja and Hess), they didn’t push her career forward that much at the time (as she once joked, she never got to be interviewed at the time because her movies were never released on any sort of schedule where you could do press for them), so she still did a lot of TV guest spots. Eventually, by the 1980s, it was just too hard for her to find acting work (her last few jobs were on notable shows, but as essentially one-line mother gigs), so she retired from acting and became a successful restaurant manager. It’s too bad, as she was certainly a standout to watch on both film and the small screen.

The Bill Cosby Show (Vicki Himbrough)



On The Bill Cosby Show Season 1’s “How to Play the Game,” Clark popped off of the screen as a teacher who tries to get Coach Kincaid (Cosby) to teach a football player who is also her student the meaning of sportsmanship. Kincaid agrees, both to impress the teacher (who he wants to date) but also to avoid losing the player from his team. He has an elaborate plan involving handball, but in the end, he teaches his lesson by losing his cool himself in a handball tournament, leading the student to realize that that was how he had been acting, and vows to avoid acting like that ever again.