Days of Our Lives Memorial Tributes

Actor/dancer turned painter Clive Clerk died on June 22, 2005 at the age of 59. Mr. Clerk was born in Trinidad and moved to Canada as a young boy. At the age of 17, he moved to New York City to try out acting. His first role was as Wang San in the road company of "Flower Drum Song." It was there that he was spotted and given a lead role in the 1963 film "The Seven Day Idol." He later appeared in the original Broadway cast of "A Chorus Line." His many film and TV credits include "Send Me No Flowers," "Dear Brigitte," "Happy Days," "Days of Our Lives," "The Mod Squad," "The Rat Patrol," "I Spy" and "Combat!" After leaving acting, and using the name Clive Wilson, Clerk had a successful career as an abstract painter.

Charla Doherty
(Julie Olson, 1965-1966)
August 6, 1946-May 29, 1988

(Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1988)

Mary Frann
(Amanda Howard Peters, 1974-1979)
February 27, 1943-September 23, 1998

(New York Times, September 25, 1998)

Joy Garrett
(Jo Johnson, 1987-1993)
March 2, 1945-February 11, 1993

     Joy Garrett, who won repeated awards as the mother figure Jo Johnson on the daytime soap opera "Days of Our Lives" over the past seven years, has died. She was 47. She died Thursday at UCLA Medical Center of liver failure. Her "Days of Our Lives" role won her several awards as best supporting actress from Soap Opera People Magazine and Soap Opera Digest. Miss Garrett earlier appeared for one year as Boobsie Caswell on another daytime soap, "The Young and the Restless."
     A native of Ft. Worth, she was named Little Miss Ft. Worth at age 4, and Miss Ft. Worth 13 years later. As a teen-ager she was lead vocalist with the Ted Weems Orchestra for two years. Miss Garrett was educated at Texas Wesleyan University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She began her career on Broadway, where she starred as bad girl Betty Rizzo in "Grease" and appeared in "Inner City" and "The Candy Apple." She also appeared in several off-Broadway productions and starred in stock and touring companies in such roles as Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls," Sybil in "Private Lives," and Rosemary in "How to Succeed in Business."
     Moving to Hollywood, she appeared in films including "Who?" with Trevor Howard and Elliott Gould, and "Callie and Son" with Lindsay Wagner and Michelle Pfeiffer. But her most successful medium proved to be television. In addition to the soaps, she guest-starred on prime time series such as "Magnum P.I.," "Night Court," "Remington Steele," "Quincy," "Three's Company," "Charlie's Angels," and recently, "Star Trek: The Next Generation." She is survived by her parents, Clarence and Kathleen Garrett of Ft. Worth. (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1993)

Coleen Gray, an actress who dreamed of playing femmes fatales but was repeatedly cast as innocents in noir films like Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” died on Monday at her home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 92. David Schecter, a friend, confirmed her death.

With wavy hair and luminous skin, Ms. Gray had the looks to play one of film noir’s leading ladies in the 1940s and ’50s. But her girl-next-door demeanor effectively typecast her as the love interest in crime movies and cowboy pictures.

“I was always Goody Two-Shoes,” Ms. Gray was quoted as saying in “Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir,” by Eddie Muller. “The juicier parts, it was determined, were not for me.”

Ms. Gray made the most of her niche, however, appearing with some of the biggest stars of the time. Her first major part was as the love interest of a parolee, played by Victor Mature, in Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” (1947), which she also narrated. The film was the movie debut of Richard Widmark, who played the murderer.

Ms. Gray played a wife who refused to take part in a grift with her husband, a carnival con man played by Tyrone Power, in “Nightmare Alley” (1947). She also appeared in westerns, notably as the sweetheart of John Wayne’s cattle-rancher character in Howard Hawks’s “Red River” (released in 1948).

In “The Killing” (1956), Ms. Gray was the love interest of Sterling Hayden’s criminal, who is bent on robbing a racetrack before settling down with her. But she would much rather have played the scheming wife who double-crossed her husband, she told The New York Times in 1999, and not getting the part — Marie Windsor did — “was frustrating.”

Doris Bernice Jensen was born on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Neb. She grew up in Hutchinson, Minn., and received a bachelor’s degree in English and music from Hamline University in St. Paul in 1943.

She moved to Hollywood and worked as a waitress before signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox and adopting the screen name Coleen Gray.

She married the screenwriter Rodney Amateau in 1945. That marriage ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to William C. Bidlack, lasted until his death in 1978.

In 1950 Ms. Gray starred alongside Bing Crosby in Frank Capra’s comedy “Riding High” and, in 1954, Mr. Hayden again in the western “Arrow in the Dust.” She played a nurse involved in a drug ring opposite Richard Conte in “The Sleeping City” (1950), much of which was filmed at Bellevue Hospital in New York

Her film career waned later in the 1950s, and she began appearing in B movies like “The Leech Woman” (1960), in which she played a monstrous woman who uses fluid from men’s brains to ward off aging. She also appeared regularly on television shows like “77 Sunset Strip,” “Mister Ed” and “The Virginian.”

In recent years Ms. Gray, an advocate for conservative Christian causes, worked with her third husband, Joseph Zeiser, in a prison ministry founded by Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard M. Nixon who had spent time behind bars in connection with the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Zeiser, who was known as Fritz, died in 2012. Ms. Gray is survived by a daughter , Susan Amateau, from her first marriage; a son, Bruce Bidlack, from her second marriage; two stepsons, Rick and Steve Zeiser; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

When Mr. Muller, the author of “Dark City Dames,” interviewed Ms. Gray at her home, he mentioned he had recently seen her playing a disreputable schemer on a rerun of “Perry Mason.” She lit up.

“Did you believe me as a nasty person?” Ms. Gray asked. “I’m so happy.” (Obituary courtesy of New York Times)