Dane Clark mini-bio: He was born Bernard Zanville in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Cornell University and St. John's Law School (Brooklyn). When he had trouble finding work in the mid-1930's, he tried boxing, baseball, construction, sales, modeling. From there, he went into acting, on Broadway ("Dead End", "Stage Door", "Of Mice and Men"), which finally brought him to Hollywood. He acted under his own name until 1943 when, as Dane Clark (a name he said was given him by Humphrey Bogart), he took the role of sailor Johnnie Pulaski in Warner's Action in the North Atlantic (1943), a wartime tribute to the Merchant Marine. He was a regular in World War II movies, playing the part of a submariner in Destination Tokyo (1943), an airman in God Is My Co-Pilot (1945) and a marine in Pride of the Marines (1945).
Though he co-starred with such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Bette Davis and Raymond Massey, it was his self-described "Joe Average" image which got him his parts: "They don't go much for the 'pretty boy' type [at Warner Brothers]. An average-looking guy like me has a chance to get someplace, to portray people the way they really are, without any frills." He was also proud of his role as Abe Saperstein, who founded the Harlem Globetrotters black basketball team, in Go, Man, Go! (1954), a film which he believed pioneered in opposing race hated.
Date of Death:
11 September 1998, Santa Monica, California, USA.
