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"I could always get attention at a new school by getting in the drama club plays. It was the fastest way to make my mark. I realized we wouldn't stay long enough to make it any other way." -- Clarice Blackburn
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Clarice
Blackburn Appeared in: 79 episodes First episode: #67, September 27, 1966 Last episode: 1104, September 17, 1970 Biography "I'd love to visit it sometime," she told a New York Daily News reporter in 1960. "My salesman father and mother were always on the go. We lived in Wisconsin, Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas after California. That's probably the reason for my drive to act. I could always get attention at a new school by getting in the drama club plays. It was the fastest way to make my mark. I realized we wouldn't stay long enough to make it any other way." She
earned a bachelor's degree in speech and drama at the Texas State
College for Women, then made her professional debut in 1947 on Martha's
Vineyard in The Circle of Chalk. An
outstanding performance in an Equity Library Theatre production
of The Great Big Doorstep in 1950 led to a job as understudy
for Eva Gabor in The Happy Time on Broadway. "It
wasn't a happy time for me," she told a newspaper reporter
years later. "There is nothing more frustrating for an actress
than waiting to go on for a star. You hope they get ptomaine poisoning.
And you hope they don't." The
Happy Time starred Shirley Booth, with whom Clarice would appear
again on Broadway, in The Desk Set in 1955.
Clarice's
other stage appearances included a lead role in a 1953 revival of
The Grass Harp, a critically acclaimed lead in American
Gothic (also 1953; both at Circle in the Square), Juno
(1959), The Miracle Worker (with Patty Duke in 1961), The
Queen and the Rebels (1965), and Good Day (1965). Clarice
received positive reviews for several dramatic turns on television,
including the role of Zeena, the sick wife in Ethan Frome
(starring Julie Harris, in 1960) and The Crucible in 1967,
starring Colleen Dewhurst and George C. Scott. In
September 1967, Clarice joined the cast of Dark Shadows,
as Bill Malloy's housekeeper, Mrs. Sarah Johnson, who soon finds
employment at Collinwood -- initially as a spy for Burke Devlin.
She remained on the show until 1970, and had a cameo in Night
of Dark Shadows. Her other films included Pretty Poison
(1968) and Man on a Swing, a 1974 murder mystery starring
Joel Grey as a crime-solving psychic. Clarice moved on to several other soap operas, and she must have been paying close attention to the structure of her scripts. As part of the writing team for All My Children, she won Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1988. She died in New York City, of cancer, in 1995.
Dark
Shadows Dan Curtis Productions. All rights reserved.
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