Clark was born in
Stillwater, Minnesota, on May 14, 1908. His father, James B. Clark Sr., owned a restaurant, and he had a brother, Asa. He was educated in the public schools in
Cleveland,
Ohio, and graduated from
Ohio University in
Athens, Ohio. He began his career in his family's restaurant business. But in 1937 he moved to California and found work as a film editor at
20th Century Fox, and later married Isabel O'Brien. Clark acted as associate director on all six of these videotaped episodes, assisting the directors with technical issues regarding videotape and helping to keep the production on track. The episodes he worked on were "
Long Distance Call", "
Static", "
Twenty Two", "
The Lateness of the Hour", "
The Whole Truth", and the Christmas episode "
The Night of the Meek". Clark worked with director
Jack Smight on four of these episodes. In 1966, Clark was associate director alongside director
Alex Segal on the
made-for-television movie Death of a Salesman, based on the
play of the same name by
Arthur Miller. They shared a
Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing for a Television Film in 1967 for this effort. In the 1960s, Clark frequently collaborated with producer
Robert B. Radnitz. Throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s, Clark continued to direct films, although just 15 pictures bear his name. His most popular and critically praised motion pictures focused on people's relationships with animals and the wild:
A Dog of Flanders (1959),
The Sad Horse (1959),
Misty (1961),
Flipper (1963),
Island of the Blue Dolphins (1964), and
My Side of the Mountain (1969).
A Dog of Flanders was widely praised for its performances and lush, painterly cinematography, while
Flipper proved highly popular and led to a long-running television series (with which Clark was not associated). James B. Clark retired from the entertainment industry in 1974. Clark died at his home in Woodland Hills, California, of unspecified causes at the age of 92. ==Selected filmography==