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 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.
“There are so many levels to her personality,” she said of her character in a 2000 Temple of Schlock interview. “She’s such a collection of contradictions. Playing that part was very rewarding.”
Clark portrayed a government agent in the Jim Brown-starring Slaughter (1972) and Muff, the leader of an all-female Black gang aiming to derail murderous drug dealers, in Switchblade Sisters (1975), directed by Jack Hill.
She then recurred as Janet Lawson, the love interest of Demond Wilson’s character, on six episodes of NBC’s Sanford and Son from 1976-77. Lamont’s pop, Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), does not approve of them getting engaged at first, but he comes around.
