Clem Bevans and Merle Earle have a lot in common, which isn’t so strange considering they are cousins. Most notably, they started new careers rather late in life, especially in an industry that seems to favor the young.
Clem Bevans
Clem Bevans was born in the unincorporated community of Cozaddale, Ohio, on October 16, 1879. From an early age, he had a varied career as a stage actor, mostly appearing with a sidekick named Grace Emmett, before transitioning into burlesque theater and light opera.
Ath the ripe old age of 55, in the year 1935, Clem Bevans made the transition from stage to screen, appearing as Doc Wiggin in the Henry Fonda film Way Down East. Everyone, it seems, just fell in love with Clem – an older gent, somewhere between cranky and grumpy. Over the next few years, any time filmmakers needed a grumpy old man, they called Clem – and boy did they call him a lot.
Clem really seemed to enjoy making movies, however being typecast as the old curmudgeon wasn’t what he truly aspired to do. It would take some time, but eventually Clem would be cast in a few different kinds of roles. Alfred Hitchcock cast him as a Nazi spy in Saboteur. In 1958, he accepted a role on Perry Mason playing murderer Captain Hugo in the episode The Case of the Demure Defendant. And he played Captain Cobb in Disney’s Davy Crocket miniseries. Yet, after making these films, he’d return to appearing as his typecast regular persona.
By the time Clem passed away in 1963, according to IMDB, he had amassed 141 acting credits – not bad for someone who got such a late start.
Merie Earle (Ireland)
Many people may not realize that Clem Bevans had a younger cousin– Merie Earle Ireland. She had been born in 1889 in Morrow, Ohio before the family moved closer to the Columbus area. There, they all lived until her husband’s retirement when the entire family packed up and moved to California to be closer to other family.
Merie began acting, mostly in plays at her family’s church and that’s where she was “discovered”. She made a few appearances in commercials, mostly for Polaroid and Dodge, as the “little old lady from Pasadena”.
She finally caught the acting bug when she appeared in the Dick Van Dyke film Fitzwilly, although it would be a few more years before she was cast as the role she would be most noted for – Maude Gormley on The Waltons, appearing in roughly 15 episodes. Other shows you might have seen her in include The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Bewitched, Green Acres, The Bob Newhart Show, All in the Family, WKRP in Cincinnati, and (of course) The Love Boat… among others.
In 1978, Merie was scheduled to make her Broadway debut in Paul Zindel’s Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, but an accident during rehearsals resulted in a broken hip, causing her to withdraw.
Merie Earle passed away in 1983 after a lengthy health battle from colon cancer. Her body was returned to Ohio where she was interred in Green Lawn Cemetery.
