Anthony Clark, the sweet-faced stand-up comic who was the star of his own series, Boston Common, ahead of a longer run on Yes, Dear, died November 10 at 62.
His longtime friend Mike O’Malley, another Yes, Dear star, announced his death, writing:
“Anthony Clark died yesterday. He was a hilarious guy. When my wife Lisa and I were dating back in the mid-nineties, Anthony was already famous in Boston, regularly selling out comedy shows. The first time we saw him at The Comedy Connection we laughed and laughed and laughed. He was so unique — one of those comics who is laughing along with you at the absurdity of his stories and observations and it just made you laugh harder because he was laughing. I was a fan before I was a friend. We spoke on the phone three weeks ago. He had us laughing loudly as he always did. Attached are some snapshots from our last episode of Yes Dear which ended twenty years ago after 122 episodes. He invested his money well and essentially retired after we wrapped. Rest in peace, Tony.”
Clark was a bit of an invisible man in the world of sitcoms — in the same way Yes, Dear, which had a considerable run, is a slept-on series. And yet, I fully expect many to mourn his death as they are reminded of his work.
He was lowkey about everything, including being gay. He reportedly did not talk about being gay in his stand-up act but was referred to casually as gay by a fellow comedian and never corrected him, so could be considered to have been quietly out, sort of like how Luke Evans was right after his movie stardom hit (and before he reiterated his identity years later).
Still, when he was plugging his shows, nobody would ask about his sexual orientation anymore.
It was out there so much so that in the ‘90s, National Enquirer took advantage of the situation to soft-out him in a piece that accurately reported his orientation was a matter of public record, but that was clearly fishing for some shock from its readers.
The same piece casually mentioned he and River Phoenix were “inseparable” and that Clark was inconsolable over the tragic actor’s death.
Clark was born April 4, 1964, in Lynchburg, Virginia. He grew up in Gladys, a town he said you should move to if you were dying because “every day feels like a frickin’ eternity.”
Right after college in Boston, he moved to L.A. and hit the stand-up circuit. He was almost immediately placed on an up-and-comers bill with Dave Chappell and Louis C.K. by Garry Shandling, which led to some acting work. That included the minor films Dogfight (1991) and The Thing Called Love (1993) both of them starring Phoenix.
He was also a stand-out as a flaming barber in The Rock (1996), starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.
Clark had back-to-back sitcoms, starting with the charming Boston Common, in which he played a Virginian delivering his sister (Hedy Burress) to college in Boston who falls for a girl (Traylor Howard) and sticks around.
In spite of lasting just two seasons, it was a big hit in Season 1, but was doomed when it was shuffled off to Sunday nights. It aired 1996-1997.
Next up was Soul Man (1997-1998), Dan Akyroyd’s stab at sitcom greatness for ABC.
In 2000, he became Greg on Yes, Dear, a well-liked sitcom on CBS that starred Clark, O’Malley, Jean Louisa Kelly and Liza Snyder, and that included mega guest performances by Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, Jerry Van Dyke and more.
The show ran six seasons, and Clark then hosted Last Comic Standing for a single season (2006).
After that, Clark mostly retired. He appeared in the 2012 feature My Uncle Rafael and on an episode of West of Liberty in 2019 (presuming this is not an IMDb error based on his common name), but otherwise had invested his sitcom money wisely enough to be able to leave the public eye.
His final major stand-up stab was the special he produced in 2012 called Ambiguous.⚡️