GARY CLARKE INTERVIEW WEREWOLF ROLE WAS A HOOT, HOWL FOR CLARKE! Before 'Teen Wolf' and Taylor Lautner, he put on hairy face and went 'all out' By John Beifuss, June 1, 2011 Vampires are so 2010. This season, werewolves are hot as well as hairy, not just on "True Blood" and "Twilight" but also on MTV, where the new series "Teen Wolf" -- a sexed-up makeover of the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie -- debuts Sunday night, to remind us that some adolescents experience more profound body changes than others. As a recent The New York Times Magazine cover story about the program proclaimed: "We Are All Teenage Werewolves." Well, at least some of us are. Michael J. Fox. Jason Bateman, Fox's successor in 1987's "Teen Wolf Too." Taylor Lautner, hunky "Twilight" shape-shifter. Tyler Posey, star of the new MTV series. And Gary Clarke, who is here Thursday through Saturday to participate in the Memphis Film Festival, the region's annual celebration of the golden age of Hollywood. Clarke, 77, is America's oldest teenage werewolf. In fact, he's one of only two men to have played what classic-horror fans think of as the Teenage Werewolf, the juvenile delinquent with the radical pompadour and severe overbite introduced in the 1957 drive-in howler "I Was a Teenage Werewolf." The movie was so successful that it opened the doors on a reform school's worth of monstrous minors, including "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" (1957), "Teenage Cave Man" (1958), "Teenage Monster" (1958) and "Teenagers from Outer Space" (1959). Released by the nation's No. 1 purveyor of youth-oriented exploitation, American-International Pictures, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" starred a pre-"Bonanza" Michael Landon (who died in 1991) as a high-school hothead -- a Rebel Without a Cause who became a Rebel With Sharp Claws when he was transformed into a murderous lycanthrope by the local mad scientist (ubiquitous Whit Bissell). When American-International decided to revive the character for 1958's "How To Make a Monster," the studio fetched Clarke for werewolf duty. "I think I got it simply because there was a physical similarity between Landon and me," said Clarke, in an interview conducted before his arrival in Memphis. "I'm sure I was the second choice. I was never under the delusion that they could have had Michael Landon and figured I was much better." Almost 40 years old, the Memphis Film Festival is primarily a celebration of classic TV and movie Westerns, and this year's roster of some two dozen celebrity guests includes the stars of such series as "Wagon Train," "Laramie," "Laredo" and "Lancer." Clarke was invited here to reunite with James Drury, Roberta Shore, Randy Boone and Don Quine, his co-stars on "The Virginian," which aired from 1962 to 1971 on NBC. Clarke also was a regular on the 1967 ABC Western "Hondo." He's also not the only guest at the festival with a full moon complex. Comic actor James Hampton was fatherly and avuncular as well as lycanthropic in "Teen Wolf" and "Teen Wolf Too." John Saxon was a wolf in more ways than one in "My Mom's a Werewolf" (1989), which flipped the script by making the parent the monster and the teenagers the investigators. A Los Angeles native who now lives in Austin, Texas, Clarke was a young singer who performed in stage revues with such legends as Louis Prima, Rudy Vallée and The Lettermen at the same time he pursued a movie career. His first two films were "Dragstrip Riot" and "Missile to the Moon"; the latter was the tale of two escaped convicts (including Clarke) who stow away on the first rocket flight to Earth's satellite, "where they meet all the Miss Universe contestants," Clarke said. The moon, according to the film, is a grabby place. It's home not just to a subterranean civilization of female beauties who are eager to embrace their first men but also to a dog-size, puppety and rather cuddly giant spider. "That spider -- it was nothing to fear," Clarke said. "You wanted to grab one of the legs and start dancing with it." Clarke next appeared in "How To Make a Monster," directed by Herbert L. Strock and produced by genre legend Herman Cohen. It teamed the Teenage Werewolf and the Teenage Frankenstein (Gary Conway) in an unconventionally self-referential horror movie in which the monsters -- onscreen as well as off -- were actually actors in scary costumes. In the film, Robert H. Harris stars as an insane Hollywood makeup artist who mixes a secret ingredient into his monster get-ups so he can transform young actors Larry Drake (Clarke) and Tony Mantell (Conway) into killers. So when Drake is made up to look like the Teenage Werewolf, he essentially becomes the werewolf, and a slave to the vengeful makeup artist's bidding. The werewolf makeup job took "a couple of hours," Clarke said. "And it took about 4 minutes to take off. "They had a wig and gloves that I think they bought at Pep Boys, and they put hair on the gloves. They had spirit gum and they stuck all this hair on my face and cut it and shaped it, and they did that every day. I think the movie took seven or eight days to shoot, 10 days, tops. "You look back and think, 'What a ridiculous film,' but it was fun. You're doing what you love to do. And we took it very seriously -- 'Wow, look out, Jimmy Dean, here I come.'" In other words, even a Teenage Werewolf can be a method actor. "I remember, a guy was training attack dogs, and he let me come out and watch. And you'd see these dogs go after the guys in the padded suits, and I would take acting notes from those dogs, and roll it into my character somehow. "But I'm an actor, not a werewolf; there has to be a fine line somewhere. I remember, there was one scene set in a screening room, and the werewolf comes in and kills a guy -- bites him in the throat. And the actor said, 'Gary, this is a brand new suit, can you kind of take it easy?' So I mentioned it to the director and the producer, and they said, 'Gary, don't worry about it, this is his last scene -- we want you to go all out.' The actor wasn't paying me, the producer was, so who do you listen to? I didn't drool on his suit, but I did shake him up a little." Disclaimer: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER was copyright 1958 by Sunset Productions and released by American International Pictures and renewed in 1986 by Selma Enterprises. All rights reserved. No rights given or implied. Do not use any material on this website without permission. TOP OF PAGE