May Clark

Mabel Louise Clark was born on 1 June 1885 at "Ferry House", Sunbury on Thames, Middlesex, one of five children of Louisa Chapman (1866–?) and William John Clark (1861–1932), a boat builder. The 1891 and 1901 Census returns for Walton-on-Thames show that the Sunbury-born Mabel Louise Clark was then living with her parents, William and Louisa Clark, in Walton, just streets away from where Cecil Hepworth opened his studios in 1899.

Between 1900 and 1908 she worked for Hepworth at the Hepworth Film Studios, Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, where she did everything from creating special effects and set decoration to costume design and carpentry. In addition she assisted with developing and printing the film. Her most famous role was in the 1903 film Alice in Wonderland where she played Alice opposite her future husband Norman Whitten as the "Mad Hatter". This film is historically important as it is the first in a long line of later film adaptations of Lewis Carroll's 1865 children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She also played the part of a distraught nursemaid in Hepworth's 1905 film, Rescued By Rover, which was a global success, with 395 prints sold for worldwide distribution. Clark acted in approximately 22 short silent films.

On 14 March 1907, she married Whitten at St Mary's Church, Walton-on-Thames, in Walton-on-Thames, with their marriage certificate showing the professions of both Clark and Whitten as cinematographers and living in Walton at that time. They had two sons: Vernon Norman William Whitten (1908–1982), a director, film cameraman and photographer, and Kenneth Whitten (1918-2016).

In the mid-1920s, her marriage ended and was dissolved before 1929. In 1941, she married William Joseph French.

Clark died in London in 1971, aged 85.