Clive Morton worked for four years for the East India Dock Company, before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and entering the acting profession. He made his stage debut in 1920 and did not act on screen until 1932. He was regularly employed for the next four decades, except for wartime service in the British Army. He was usually cast in small roles as pompous upper-crust types, dignified aristocrats, officers or executives. He appeared in some of the greatest British films made during the post-war period, including Scott of the Antarctic (1948), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955). On television he appeared in classic serials such as The Forsyte Saga (1967) and Wives and Daughters (1971). He is also fondly remembered by cult television fans for giving an impeccable performance in one of his final roles as the decent and patriotic but gullible and doomed prison governor Colonel Trenchard, who falls under the spell of Roger Delgado's scheming Master, in the classic Doctor Who (1963) serial Doctor Who: The Sea Devils: Episode One (1972).