Placer County has little-known star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
By Gus Thomson, Auburn Journal
Loveable irascible Fred Clark is far from a household name.
And he may be little more than a second banana in the Hollywood moviemaking jungle.
But he’s Placer County’s second banana. He was born in the Mt. Pleasant district between Auburn and Lincoln March 19, 1914.
And – this is an important caveat – his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is the only one of the more than 2,000 that honors a native of Placer County.
Who was Clark? In the Placer County realm, he was the son of England-born Frederick Clark, an attorney who came to Placer County because of the healthy air and became a successful orchard owner. Clark’s mother, Stella,was a school teacher from Chico beloved by the few and last students at tiny Mt. Pleasant school, which closed in 1919.
The junior Clark was also the joker who would quote a popular ditty in the Lincoln High School yearbook asking whether “your chewing gum loses its flavor on your bedpost overnight?” He graduated in 1930 from Lincoln High and went on to Stanford, where he began to find a future in acting. 1938 found him on Broadway for the first time. After taking a break for Navy and Army service in World War II, Clark would inhabit hundreds of memorable roles in Hollywood films and TV programs until his death in 1968.