Clark and McCullough

Clark and McCullough, comedy team. [Robert Edwin] Bobby Clark (1888–1960) made his debut in a minor role in Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks in his native Springfield, Ohio, in 1902. In 1905 he teamed with Paul McCullough (1883–1936), another Springfield native, with whom he played until McCullough's death thirty‐one years later. They performed in minstrel shows, circuses, and vaudeville, perfecting the basic formula they would employ so successfully in musical comedy and revue. Clark, wearing painted‐on glasses and wielding a sawed‐off cane and a cigar, portrayed a likable but scoundrelly fellow, while the taller, heftier, mustachioed McCullough was his babyish, whimpering stooge. They first came to playgoers' attention in the 1922 and 1924 editions of the Music Box Revue. Thereafter they appeared in The Ramblers (1926), Strike Up the Band (1930), Here Goes the Bride (1931), Walk a Little Faster (1932), and Thumbs Up! (1934). After McCullough's suicide, Clark appeared alone in Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, The Streets of Paris (1939), Star and Garter (1942), Mexican Hayride (1944), Sweethearts (1947), and As the Girls Go (1948), his last Broadway role. In 1950 he directed Michael Todd's Peep Show, and in 1956 toured in Damn Yankees. Describing his antics in Mexican Hayride, Lewis Nichols wrote in the Times, “Bobby Clark is funny just standing still on a stage, licking ashes from his cigar and with a surprised air looking out over his audience as though he did not expect it might be there.”