Mae Clarke Biography

Mae Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz on August 10, 1907 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The future stage and screen star grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and began her show business career dancing on the New York stage.

She began appearing in films in the late 1920s and had her "breakthrough" role as the pitiable prostitute in The Front Page (1931), based on the famous Hecht-MacArthur play. That same year, she played her most memorable movie scene in the gangster drama The Public Enemy, in which her screen boyfriend James Cagney smashed a grapefruit in her face.

She kept busy in films until the mid-1930s; by the 1940s she was playing smallish parts in as few as one film a year. She had one of her final sizable screen roles as the heroine of the 1949 sci-fi serial King of the Rocket Men.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she was a busy bit player in movies and television (including a regular part on the daytime drama General Hospital.) She was a longtime resident of the Motion Picture and Television Fund Country House before her death.

In addition to her famous grapefruit scene in The Public Enemy, she co-starred in two other films with James Cagney, and she co-starred in the 1931 Frankenstein with Colin Klive and Boris Karloff. She changed her hair color and styles frequently over the years, but as a blonde in 1925 she inspired Anita Loos to create a character named Lorelei Lee for her novel Gentleman Prefer Blondes.

Mae was also a talented painter, her favorite director was James Whale, and her personal favorite of her own films was the 1931 drama Waterloo Bridge. She died on April 29, 1992 at the age of 84.