Korean War vet Matt Clark dead. Oh, and Paul Ehrlich.
Matt Clark was one of the more ubiquitous TV and movie character actors, and died yesterday in Austin TX at the age of 89 from complications due to a broken back. Mr. Clark is listed as an Army Korean War veteran Wiki . His length of service (two years) and date of birth in 1936 suggests he was drafted into the Army, did his time, and left, like many draftees.
Name not sounding familiar? He was a character actor, the kind of fella who plays ‘Cab Driver’ or ‘Outlaw #3’. They make shows work – a bad one can ruin a show, a good one (like a Ben Johnson, R.G. Armstrong, or a Jack Elam) help provide the depth and verisimilitude that make a show work. Most commonly they’re a ‘that guy – you know’ that most can’t name, except maybe as “wasn’t he that guy who did XXX in that other movie?”. The nobody who gets beat up by the bad guy, the actor who fades into his roles as opposed to the stars that headline. You know, THAT guy. And Matt Clark was one of the best.
A quick list of movies you may have seen him in:
And there’s about 110 other films and TV shows you could have seen him in. Worth checking out. Director Brian Hegland put it well:
“But what did I get? I got an artist who not only keenly understood his role but understood the scene he was in and where it fell in the grand scheme of the film. I got a talented performer who was more than eager to improvise and stay perfectly in character until the cameras stopped rolling. In short, I got a genuine actor. And I was lucky to have him.”
And from a respected man, we go to another who was mainly notable for being wrong. I mean, he made millions from being wrong: the Al Gore of his day, albeit with more books to his name.
Paul Ehrlich passed Friday. Originally an entomologist – yeah, a bug guy – he rose to fame and fortune back in the late ’60s with “The Population Bomb.” You know the predictions – we’re running out of everything, there are just too many people, social collapse is a’comin’ soon, yadda yadda yadda. From The Population Bomb:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…
“We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.”
Might be worth noting that when he wrote this, the world population was approaching 4,000,000,000. Nowadays it is more like 8,000,000,000. Anyone else noticed billions starving to death?
On the first Earth Day in 1970, he warned that “[i]n ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.” “If I were a gambler,” Professor Ehrlich concluded before boarding an airplane, “I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
For the feckless nations of the developing world, Ehrlich suggested that western governments should simply put an end to all food aid. He argued for the forced sterilisation of all Indian men with three or more children, warning that without such a policy food shortages in India would kill 200 million people by 1980. In fact, by 1980 India was exporting surplus grain to Russia (though Ehrlich argued that more intensive farming techniques have simply deferred the population disaster).
As far as I can tell, Ehrlich spent his draft-eligible days as a professional student and never served. Perhaps it would have been good for him.
Godspeed, Mr. Clark.
Category: We Remember
The Korean War ended in July, 1953 at which time Mr. Clark would have been 16 1/2. More likely he served in Korea immediately after the conflict. Still, much thanks for your honorable service. As we all know, you do not have to be in a “war” to face danger and privation.
Cool sideburns…