South Pacific Sexpot

Beefcake B-movie star Ken Clark’s first big role was in an A-Plus-movie (from the producers’, not critics’, point of view) – South Pacific, the film version of the biggest musical hit of the 1950’s, which was the biggest film of 1958 as well. (Clark also had a supporting role in the Elvis Presley western Love Me Tender, but it was not significant.) Although Clark’s role as Stewpot was only a supporting one, it was still a major, high profile part in a blockbuster film, and unfortunately for Clark this first big break turned out to be the high point of his Hollywood career. After South Pacific he would go on to work in increasingly less prestigious productions, first in quality television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, then as a domestic B-movie star in drive-in fare like Attack of the Giant Leeches and 12 to the Moon, and finally as a leading man in foreign secret agent (“eurospy”) and sword-and-sandal (“peplum”) flicks.

But at the time of South Pacific, his star seems to have been rising, and he’s all over the film – and there’s a lot of him to see, even in minor moments. His brawny, muscular frame looms large over every scene involving the crew of the , and he even has a solo, “There is Nothing Like a Dame” (although Clark in fact only lip-synced the song; the dubbed vocal was actually done by Thurl Ravenscroft, better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger and as the vocalist for “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”). But what really, ahem, stands out about his performance is the huge bulge in his sailor jeans. As in the aforementioned Attack of the Giant Leeches and 12 to the Moon, he’s busting at the seams, the size and shape of his manparts at times almost “indecently” well defined. Stewpot indeed – Clark seems to be packing plenty of beef and potatoes in his denim bellbottoms. As the film progresses, you start to wonder why they didn’t just name him Sexpot – it’s that obvious. Someone was having a very good time staging this Pacific Theater version of the Battle of the Bulge.

There’s also lots of shirtless action, showing off Clark’s great physique. In one scene, he appears wearing nothing but a pair of red speedos (surely no actual GI’s wore bikini briefs in the South Pacific during WWII?), parading his blond hairy pecs and grapefruit-sized shoulders around the island.

Then in a later sequence, said torso is shaved smooth as a baby’s butt as Clark appears as a Bacchus figure in the movie’s “musical within a musical,” a clump of grapes dangling suggestively in front of his crotch (although after watching his bulging crotch for the previous 90 minutes, the hanging fruit of his loins seems almost chaste).

It’s not clear why Clark’s career never took off – he wasn’t a bad actor, and he seems to have had a lot of opportunities (including a failed TV show of his own, Brock Callahan), but in any case, Hollywood’s loss was Europe’s gain, and Clark enjoyed a long career in Italian films.