Crabbe, Buster (1908 – 83)
Price: $75.00
Description:American athlete and actor.
Document signed: check dated 1981, made payable to AAA Lawn Care for $15.00. Accompanied by a 5″x7″ black and white reprint image of Crabbe from the film King of the Jungle.
Appeared in a number of film series in the 1930s and ’40s and went on to success in television. Crabbe was USC’s first All – American swimmer and a 1931 NCAA freestyle titlist. His role in the 1933 Tarzan serial Tarzan the Fearless launched a successful career in which he starred in over 100 movies. It would be the only movie in which Crabbe starred as Tarzan (the serial was re – edited into a made – for – TV feature in 1964). In the 1933’s King of the Jungle, 1941’s Jungle Man, and the 1952 serial King of the Congo, Crabbe played generic “jungle man” roles in the Tarzan mode.
Crabe also starred in the film Search for Beauty (1934) and his next major role was in 1936 as Flash Gordon in the popular Flash Gordon serial, which he reprised in two sequels, released by Universal in 1938 and 1940. The three serials were later shown extensively on American tV during the 1950s and ’60s and then edited for release on home video. Other characters he portrayed included Western hero Billy the Kid, Buck Rogers, and a brother of his real – life fraternity in the movie The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Crabbe is the only actor who played Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers – – the three top comic strip heros of the 1930s.