I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific (1948), about American sailors in love with South Pacific islanders during World War II, but never the 1958 movie. Until now.
Colonialist, imerialist, and highly heteronormative plotlines. I already knew that.
But I didn't know that beefcake abounds -- and sausages. Wait until the minor character Stewpot leads the sailors in a paeon to heteronormativity, "There's Nothing Like a Dame."
There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here
That can't be cured by putting him near
A girly, womanly, female, feminine dame
Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?
Fast forward to Stewpot's only other scene, a weightlifting contest. Darn, he's wearing grapes.
But when you see him in jeans, his beneath-the belt gifts are obvious. Maybe he was even cast for them. Henry Slate played a skinny, fully-clothed Sttewpot on Broadway, but for the movie, director Joshua Logan wanted to reflect the 1950s muscle craze, so he cast 31-year old bulging bodybuilder Ken Clark.
I checked some of Ken Clark's other works, to see if more sausages were evident.
He was born in Neffs, Ohio, a tiny town near the West Virginia border, in 1927. After high school he enlisted in the Navy, and then worked jobs as a coal miner, construction worker, and model while trying to break into acting.
The modeling included some of those nearly-n*de photos published in "fitness" magazines like Physique Pictorial. We have a backside, but I couldn't find any frontsides.
His acting career begins in 1955, with a string of two-fisted man's man roles: The Proud Ones, The Last Wagon, the True Story of Jesse James.
South Pacific did not propel Ken into stardom, in spite of his physique and sausage. The guest spots continued: A cop in Suspicion, an FBI agent in The Shaggy Dog, a cop on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (left). But at least he got a chance to showcase his talent. And stuff.
He starred in Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) as a Florida game warden who teams up with a local physician (Walter Kelley). They take off their shirts, fight giant leeches, and win the Girls.
More after the break
a.JPG)
Is that a giant leech in your pocket, or are you checking out Walter Kelley?
In 1963, Ken moved to Italy to capitalize on the sword-and-sandal craze.
Hercules against the Mongols: Hercules/Maciste (Mark Forest) fights the three evil sons of Genghis Khan. Ken plays one of the sons. We've come a long way from ancient Greece, but Herc is immortal, so it tracks.
Hercules against the Barbarians: Hercules/Maciste fights the evil Kubilai Khan (Ken).
Hercules the Invincible: Hercules (Dan Vadis) fights a giant dragon to win The Girl. Ken plays her father. Wait -- he's only 35.
He also starred in some spaghetti Westerns and played Dick Malloy, Secret Agent 077, in some Italian spy dramas.
Here Ken is posing "demurely" in a turtleneck sweater, with his by-now-familiar beneath-the-belt gifts on displayy, for an Italian movie magazine.
After 1970, Ken appeared only sporadically on tv and film, probably due to getting too old to play a lot of two-fisted man's man roles. He died in 2009, at the age of 81.
No word on whether he was gay or not, but he dated actress Shelley Winters and was married to Bette Lola Blatt before moving to Italy. No girlfriends after that. I wonder if he managed to find himself in the Rome of the Swinging Sixties.
Steve LeMarquand played Stew Pot iin the 2001 tv remake. Other notable Stewpots include Chris Caulpeltzer, Timothy McGowan, and Halem Medina (left). No word on their beneath-the-belt gifts.
See also: South Pacific: A High School Music
