Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
O.B. Clarence appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without O.B.. Great Expectations is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Lean, Gabriel Pascal, Alfred Hitchcock and others, O.B. Clarence 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.
Great Expectations (1946) as The Aged Parent · The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) as Count de Tournay · Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) as Egyptian (uncredited)
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for O.B. Clarence.
Films in Nutevio
4
1934–1946
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Great Expectations
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Great Expectations
Most frequent director
David Lean
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Lean
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
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
6.3
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
6.7 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Great Expectations, Caesar and Cleopatra — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
6.7
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. Jamaica Inn, The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Most productive era
1930s
2 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 | 6.61 film | 6.72 films |
| Thriller | 6.21 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.31 film |
| Crime | 6.21 film | — |
| Romance | — | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Count de Tournay.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
7.0 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. The current state of the argument, as The Aged Parent.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Count de Tournay
Directed by Harold Young
as Egyptian (uncredited)
Directed by Gabriel Pascal
as Coach Passenger (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
The Aged Parent
Great Expectations (1946)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Aged Parent gives O.B. Clarence a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Count de Tournay
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
Performance score6.6
The Scarlet Pimpernel asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Count de Tournay is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Egyptian (uncredited)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Performance score6.5
Caesar and Cleopatra asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Egyptian (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Coach Passenger (uncredited)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Performance score6.5
Jamaica Inn asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Coach Passenger (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 The Aged Parent
Start here. Great Expectations is the clearest statement of what O.B. Clarence does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet O.B. 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.
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
Keeps the drama register of Great Expectations but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Keeps the adventure register of The Scarlet Pimpernel but asks for a colder reading of it.
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
A deliberate change of key after Jamaica Inn — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Harold Young
Director
1 film together
Notably The Scarlet Pimpernel
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together
Notably Jamaica Inn
Gabriel Pascal
Director
1 film together
Notably Caesar and Cleopatra
David Lean
Director
1 film together
Notably Great Expectations
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Lean
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Great ExpectationsHarold Young
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Scarlet PimpernelGabriel Pascal
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Caesar and CleopatraAlfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jamaica InnSix 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
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Caesar and Cleopatra
as Egyptian (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
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. O.B. Clarence 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
3 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
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Jamaica Inn
as Coach Passenger (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Great Expectations
as The Aged Parent
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jamaica Inn
as Coach Passenger (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Scarlet Pimpernel
as Count de Tournay
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Jamaica Inn
as Coach Passenger (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Caesar and Cleopatra
as Egyptian (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Caesar and Cleopatra
as Egyptian (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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