Lon Clark

Lon Clark (January 12, 1912 – October 2, 1998) was an American actor of stage and radio whose career spanned several decades. Born in Frost, Minnesota, a town his Norwegian immigrant grandfather had helped establish, Clark developed an early interest in performing through his mother, who played piano for silent films at a local theater, granting him free admission as a child. He later studied at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis.

Clark launched his professional career as a musician and actor in traveling tent shows, playing before audiences of farmers, coal miners, and Native Americans across the Dakotas. A season with the Cincinnati Summer Opera followed, after which he took a position at a Chicago radio station. A talent scout brought him to Cincinnati, where he remained at WLW from 1936 to 1940. During that period he also served as a baritone soloist at First Presbyterian Church in Walnut Hills and built experience in radio drama before relocating to New York in the 1940s.

His rich baritone voice secured him prominent roles across network radio. Most notably, Clark held the title role in Nick Carter, Master Detective on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1943 to 1955, with scripts written by Alfred Bester and others. He also played the district attorney in Front Page Farrell. His radio work extended across a wide range of programs, including the serial Mommie and the Men, the frontier adventure Wilderness Road, the World War II dramas Words at War and Soldiers of the Press, the quiz program Quick as a Flash, the soap opera Bright Horizon, and the science fiction series 2000 Plus and Exploring Tomorrow. He appeared on Lights Out, The Mysterious Traveler, The Kate Smith Hour, The March of Time, The Adventures of the Thin Man, and Norman Corwin Presents, working alongside performers including Fred Allen, Art Carney, Helen Hayes, and Orson Welles. Oldtime radio collectors have also identified Clark as the unnamed reader of Sunday funnies on the Hearst-syndicated Comic Weekly Man series.

Clark returned to the stage in his later years, appearing on Broadway between 1956 and 1960. He replaced Jason Robards in the 1956 Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. He subsequently appeared in the short-lived comedy Roman Candle, written by Sidney Sheldon, alongside Inger Stevens and Julia Meade.

Clark married Marjorie Burns in 1938, and the couple had two sons. He died on October 2, 1998, at St. Clare's Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 86. He was survived by his wife, Michelle Trudeau Clark; his sons Lon Jr. and Stephen, both of San Francisco; a brother, Gerald, of Plymouth, Minnesota; and a grandson.