Caitlin Clarke at Sixty

I should say something about Caitlin Clarke, since on this day, if she were still with us, Ms. Clarke would be sixty years of age. In anyone's reckoning, that would make her old. Also, at such an age Ms. Clarke would find theater and film roles harder and harder to find. As she once said, roles for women are hard to find and harder to compete for; but there are even fewer roles for elderly women; and there is the added prejudice of the Boomers, who do not like to admit that they are getting older and would not want to watch plays that proclaim it!

I wish Ms. Clarke had written a book (or had hired someone to write one for her) about her life, as a autobiography was written by Elisabeth Sladen. I know that she was painfully shy about promoting herself, at least early in her career. But it would have been good for her, for other actors now, and for those coming into the profession, to have her story out in the world … I mean besides my Web site.

Ms. Clarke lived her early life in the Pittsburgh area, deciding on an acting career after a visit to London, and attending Mount Holyoke and the Yale School of Drama. Her early (pre-1985) career was largely in New York, where she got four Broadway plays (Teaneck Tanzi, Arms and the Man, Marriage of Figaro, and Strange Interlude) and a Hollywood film (Dragonslayer) before disappearing into LA for the next several years. She would reemerge in regional theater before taking on the role of Charlotte Cardoza in Titanic: The Musical and a parallel teaching job under what's now The Theater Museum. After learning that she had ovarian cancer in 2000, Ms. Clarke returned to Pittsburgh, where she continued to teach acting and do occasional local theater roles until her death in 2004.

I know Ms. Clarke had a life besides this, but barring some act of devine power, we will never really know. And that pisses me off!