Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#32943
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
David Clyde works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
David Clyde appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. The Philadelphia Story is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, mystery, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, John Brahm and others, David Clyde helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The Philadelphia Story (1940) as Mac (uncredited) · The Lost Weekend (1945) as Dave (uncredited) · Waterloo Bridge (1940) as Barnes - Cronin's Butler (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #32943 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1937–1945
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Philadelphia Story
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Lost Weekend
Most frequent director
Fritz Lang
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Fritz Lang
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
6.8 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. The Lost Weekend, Ministry of Fear, The Lodger — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.8
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Union Pacific, Lost Horizon, You Only Live Once.
Most productive era
1940s
9 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.73 films | 7.04 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.63 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.31 film |
| Crime | 6.81 film | 6.61 film |
| Romance | 6.82 films | 7.05 films |
| Horror | — | 6.32 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1937Lost Horizon
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Embassy Club Steward (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1945The Lost Weekend
The current state of the argument, as Dave (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
12 of 12 films
as Mac (uncredited)
Directed by George Cukor
as Dave (uncredited)
Directed by Billy Wilder
as Barnes - Cronin's Butler (uncredited)
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
as Trunk Man (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as Guard on Coach from Lowood
Directed by Robert Stevenson
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Mac (uncredited)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mac (uncredited) gives David Clyde a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dave (uncredited)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Performance score7.1
The Lost Weekend asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dave (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Barnes - Cronin's Butler (uncredited)
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Performance score6.9
Waterloo Bridge asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Barnes - Cronin's Butler (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Trunk Man (uncredited)
Suspicion (1941)
Performance score6.8
Suspicion asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Trunk Man (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Mac (uncredited)
Start here. The Philadelphia Story is the clearest statement of what David Clyde does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet David at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Keeps the romance register of The Philadelphia Story but asks for a colder reading of it.
Suspicion (1941)
Keeps the romance register of Waterloo Bridge but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jane Eyre (1943)
Keeps the romance register of Suspicion but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Keeps the drama register of Jane Eyre but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Fritz Lang
Director
2 films together
Notably You Only Live Once
Frank Capra
Director
1 film together
Notably Lost Horizon
Cecil B. DeMille
Director
1 film together
Notably Union Pacific
George Cukor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Philadelphia Story
Mervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together
Notably Waterloo Bridge
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together
Notably Suspicion
William Wyler
Director
1 film together
Notably Mrs. Miniver
Robert Stevenson
Director
1 film together
Notably Jane Eyre
Roy William Neill
Director
1 film together
Notably Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
John Brahm
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lodger
Billy Wilder
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lost Weekend
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Fritz Lang
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
You Only Live OnceGeorge Cukor
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Philadelphia StoryBilly Wilder
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lost WeekendMervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Waterloo BridgeAlfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuspicionRobert Stevenson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jane EyreWilliam Wyler
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mrs. MiniverFrank Capra
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lost HorizonCecil B. DeMille
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Union PacificJohn Brahm
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The LodgerRoy William Neill
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf ManSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Philadelphia Story
as Mac (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Jane Eyre
as Guard on Coach from Lowood
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Philadelphia Story
as Mac (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Union Pacific
as Irishman (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Philadelphia Story
as Mac (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. David Clyde has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Ministry of Fear
as English Bobby (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ministry of Fear
as English Bobby (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Jane Eyre
as Guard on Coach from Lowood
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ministry of Fear
as English Bobby (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Philadelphia Story
as Mac (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Union Pacific
as Irishman (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Waterloo Bridge
as Barnes - Cronin's Butler (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
as Llanwelly Police Sergeant (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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