Marlene Clark, the statuesque actress who portrayed Lamont’s fiancée on Sanford and Son and stood out in such 1970s’ films as Ganja & Hess, Switchblade Sisters and Slaughter, has died. She was 85.
Clark died May 18 in her home in Los Angeles, her friend Tamara Lynch announced. No cause of death was revealed.
Clark also starred as a reptilian seductress in Roger Corman’s Night of the Cobra Woman (1972) and as one of the suspected werewolves in the British horror film The Beast Must Die (1974), and she was an early victim in the Larry Hagman-directed Beware! The Blob (1972).
Clark played John Saxon’s secretary in Enter the Dragon (1973), starring Bruce Lee, and her big-screen body of work also included Black Mamba (1974), Newman’s Law (1974), Lord Shango (1975) and The Baron ( 1977), where she appeared opposite her Beast Must Die onscreen husband, Calvin Lockhart.
In the surreal Ganja & Hess (1973), directed by Bill Gunn, Clark sparkled as a widow named Ganja who is turned into a vampire by Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones), an anthropologist turned immortal bloodsucker. He eventually gives up that way of life, but she soldiers on. The movie played as the only American entry in the Critics Week sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival that year.
