Let us now praise famous men in loincloths. In this case, Clarence Linden Crabbe II, better known as Buster Crabbe, who appeared in more than 100 movies, most of them now forgotten. He would have been 108 today, had he not shuffled off this mortal coil in 1983, at a mere 75. That was young for a man who devoted much of his life to staying fit.
He died of a heart attack, after he tripped over a wastepaper basket. Just pause for a moment: could there be a more banal passing for a man who once wrestled lions for a living? In 1933, when his movie career began, he had just won the gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics in the 400-metre freestyle. A decade later, he was a superstar, at least with young boys. He is still the only man to have played Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, three of the biggest comic strip characters of the 1930s. He's part of a small elite group: the saturated screen stars. These diving divas and swimming soubrettes had astonishing appeal at the time. There was almost a direct line between the pool and Hollywood in this era, to an extent that is now hard to fathom, if you'll pardon the pun.
Annette Kellerman, from Marrickville, started the trend when she wore a mermaid suit in The Mermaid (1911). In 1916, she wore her birthday suit in A Daughter of the Gods, the first film to cost a million dollars (clearly, they didn't spend it on costumes). Esther Williams would play her in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). Scarlett Johansson plays a character based on Esther in the Coen brothers' new movie, Hail, Caesar!, set in Hollywood in the early '50s.
That 1932 Olympics was a feeding frenzy for Hollywood. Paramount alone screen-tested 40 athletes. Eleanor Holm, who won the 100-metre backstroke, was a top draft pick. "I was hardly dry at those Olympics when I was whisked from one studio to another – Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount – to take screen tests," she said.
Buster Crabbe was the other. He was astonishingly good looking, especially without his clothes, and he could talk, which was important now that sound had taken over. He had mastered every sport he'd ever attempted and he was up for anything – including wrestling a lion in one of his first roles, in Tarzan the Fearless (1933). This was an independent movie serial produced by Sol Lesser – not to be confused with the Johnny Weissmuller movies being made at MGM. Crabbe and Weissmuller were friends, teammates at the 1928 Olympics. After his gold medal in 1932, Crabbe gave himself a year to break into movies, or go back to law school. Paramount used him first in King of the Jungle, as a character raised by lions. Sol Lesser had established through a court case that he owned the rights to Tarzan, whereas MGM claimed they did. Lesser wanted to beat MGM at their own game, with Crabbe as his jungle man, but he lacked the resources. Instead, he took money to delay his Tarzan serial until after Weissmuller's movie came out. Its success forced Crabbe to look for roles outside the jungle.
In 1936, he took off into space in the first dedicated science fiction movie serial – as Flash Gordon, based on a successful comic strip by Alex Raymond. Flash was intended to compete with the highly successful Buck Rogers strip. The Flash Gordon serial ran for three series, 1936 to 1940, all of which starred Crabbe as an "earth man" caught up in space adventures. Jean Rogers played Dale Arden, his love interest, with Charles B. Middleton as the alien megalomaniac, Ming the Merciless. George Lucas devoured these serials when they came to TV in the early 1950s. They are the starting point for Star Wars. Indeed, Lucas only started work on Star Wars when he failed to secure the rights for a new Flash Gordon movie. Darth Vader and Ming have much in common.
One reason that swimming stars were so popular in the early 1930s was that the Hays Code was not yet in force. The swimmers had beautiful bodies and didn't mind showing them in movies and serials that were much racier in 1933 than they could be after the studios submitted to the code in 1934. The pre-code Tarzan could swim naked with Jane but not after. Crabbe did a locker room changing scene in Search for Beauty (1934) that still shocks.
His career waned in the 1950s, but he was well-prepared. He hooked up with a swimming pool company in New Jersey to market the Buster Crabbe pool line. He became a stockbroker, did occasional movie and TV appearances, and settled in Scottsdale, Arizona. He lamented the fact that he had not had better roles. "Some say my acting rose to the level of incompetence and then levelled off," he once said. "I was a lot better actor than people gave me credit for. I didn't have any training, but I feel if I had been given the chance, I could have become a really good, top-rate actor."
He may have been right. The few straight roles he did showed spark, but the public just wanted to see him wet and without his shirt. Those who live by the pool die by the pool, one might say.
Twitter @ptbyrnes
