Career Highlights: Bad Boy, Variety Girl, Off Limits
First Major Screen Credit: On the Sunny Side (1942)
Biography
American actor Stanley Clements pursued a showbiz career immediately upon graduation from Brooklyn's PS 49, appearing in vaudeville and in radio. After a lean year in which he supported himself as a panhandler, Clements was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1941, earning choice juvenile roles from his first film (Accent on Love) onward. Stan's most memorable teenage role was as the tough kid "humanized" by Bing Crosby and encouraged to organize a boy's choir in the Oscar-winning Going My Way (1944). Due to his small stature, he was most often cast as jockeys, even as late as 1952's Boots Malone. In 1956, Clements was hired by Allied Artists to replace Leo Gorcey in the "Bowery Boys" B-picture series; though compelled to take second billing to comic patsy Huntz Hall, Stanley was ostensibly the group's leader, fast-talking wiseguy Duke Covaleske. Clements played Duke in six pictures, included the final Bowery Boys installment, In the Money (1958). After that, Stanley Clements concentrated on movie and TV supporting roles, including a characteristic appearance as a shifty shoe salesman on an early '60s installment of Leave It to Beaver. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Stanley Clements (July 16, 1926 – October 16, 1981) was an Americanactor and comedian.
Stanley Clements was born Stanislaw Klimowicz in Long Island, New York. Young Stan realized that he wanted a show-business career while he was in grammar school, and when he graduated from college he toured in vaudeville for two years. He then joined the touring company of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour. In 1941, he was signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox and appeared in several B films for the studio.
After a short stint with the East Side Kids, he set out on his own again, this time landing roles in more prestigious pictures (his breakthrough role was as a jockey in the Alan Ladd feature "Salty O'Rourke"). His career was interrupted by military service in World War II, and when he returned, he began appearing in lower-budgeted films. He starred in a series of action/detective pictures at Allied Artists for producer Ben Schwalb and director Edward Bernds.
Schwalb soon became staff producer for The Bowery Boys, and when he needed a replacement for Leo Gorcey in 1956, he asked Clements to step in. Clements comfortably settled into the role of Huntz Hall's sidekick, and co-starred in the final seven Bowery Boys comedies.
The series finally ended in 1958, and Clements went on to a steady career of supporting roles in film and TV until his death from emphysema in 1981. One of his last jobs was an appearance in a nationally advertised commercial for Pringle's potato chips.