Hon. Colin MacArthur Clark, (1932-2002)
Michael Rhodes
assistant to Laurence Olivier, died 17 December, 2002, aged 70.
He was born 9 October, 1932, the younger son of Sir Kenneth Clark
[later Lord Clark, OM, CH, KCB] by his wife, Elizabeth Jane Martin, of
Saltwood Castle, Kent, and was a twin with his sister, Colette.
His elder brother was the Rt Hon Alan Clark, maverick Conservative MP,
Govt Minister and controversial diarist.
The novelist Edith Wharton stood sponsor at Colin's christening, and
on her death he inherited half of her library.
He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.
Career: completed his national service in the RAF; later was personal
assistant to Sir Laurence Olivier [who was a great friend of Lord
Clark], and accompanied Olivier and his then wife, Vivien Leigh, on a
world tour of Titus Andronicus;
later he was hired to work at Granada Television (run by the
formidable Sidney Bernstein and his chief and equally formidable aide,
Denis Forman) he was quickly raised from trainee assistant floor
manager, to floor manager, where programmes he worked on included
*What the Papers Say*; then to the United States, where his arrival
coincided with the start of public broadcasting in New York via
Channel 13, or WNDT New Jersey (the final three initials stood for New
Dimensions in Television); Clark also collaborated with his father
[who had scored great success with his series *Civilization*] on a
number of television films. He also worked with Alistair Cooke after
his successful series America (1972-73). But his work with Cooke was
not among this venerable commentator's best and the films were never
shown.
Clark published an autobiography: *Younger Brother, Younger Son* in
1997.
His first book had been *The Prince, the Showgirl and Me* in 1995,
based on his diaries and experiences with Olivier and Marilyn Monroe
on the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, on which Clark had been
a *gofer* -technically *third assistant director*.
Colin Clark later published a second book on Marilyn Monroe, *My Week
with Marilyn* (2000), which filled in nine days of missing entries and
led many of Clark's colleagues on the film to surmise (incorrectly,
Clark would also insist) that he and Monroe had enjoyed a torrid
affair. But neither this, nor his autobiography, enjoyed anything like
the success of his original Monroe diary.
Colin Clark married firstly, in 1961 [divorced 1969], the French
ballerina Violette Verdy, he married secondly,1971 [divorced] Faith
Beatrice, former wife of Julian Shuckburgh, [of the Viscounts Esher] &
daughter of Sir Paul Herve Giraud Wright, KCMG, and thirdly, in 1984,
Helena Siu Kwan, daughter of Cheung Wan Li, of Hong Kong.
He is survived by his third wife, and a son, Christopher Ming Clark,
born in 1986.
His home for some years, in Portugal, Paço da Glória in the Minho
region, inherited from a close firend, was later sold.