  We examine the morphology of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) for core
helium-burning (red clump) stars to test the recent suggestion by Zaritsky &
Lin (1997) that an extension of the red clump in the Large Magellanic Cloud
(LMC) toward brighter magnitudes is due to an intervening population of stars
that is responsible for a significant fraction of the observed microlensing
toward the LMC. Using our own CCD photometry of several fields across the LMC,
we confirm the presence of this additional red clump feature, but conclude that
it is caused by stellar evolution rather than a foreground population. We do
this by demonstrating that the feature (1) is present in all our LMC fields,
(2) is in precise agreement with the location of the blue loops in the
isochrones of intermediate age red clump stars with the metallicity and age of
the LMC, (3) has a relative density consistent with stellar evolution and LMC
star formation history, and (4) is present in the Hipparcos CMD for the solar
neighborhood where an intervening population cannot be invoked. Assuming there
is no systematic shift in the model isochrones, which fit the Hipparcos data in
detail, a distance modulus of $\mu_{LMC} = 18.3$ provides the best fit to our
dereddened CMD.
