by Hal Erickson
biography
Bald, puckish vaudeville performer Harvey Clark entered films in 1916 with the New York Picture Company. Clark proved versatile enough to portray everything from greasy western gamblers to huffy British lords. Laurel and Hardy devotees will recall Clark as the long-suffering tailor in the team's early vehicle Putting Pants on Phillip (1927). In talkies, he was generally seen as pop-eyed, befuddled characters, with the spectacular exception of his "maniacal killer" turn in 1932's A Shriek in the Night. Harvey Clark is credited in many sources as having played Father William in Paramount's all-star Alice in Wonderland (1933), though his scenes were completely eliminated from the general-release print.
