Fred Crane

Aug 27 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS, by his own admission, a small shard in a grand mosaic but his drawl was so full of southern comfort that he was immediately cast as one of the goo-kneed, ever-doting swains, who danced to the whims of Scarlett O’Hara.

His was the voice first heard on Gone with the Wind, to many the greatest Hollywood movie.

“What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war’s going to start any day now, so we’d have left college anyhow,” he said.

Well, fiddle-dee-dee, it might not have matched the films most famous line, Rhett Butler’s, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”, but it gave Fred Cane his slice of immortality.

As is so often the case in life, the whole thing was luck. Crane, from New Orleans, was an aspiring actor himself, but had on a whim decided to accompany a cousin to her audition for the film.

On hearing the 20-year-old’s rich southern accent, the casting director, George Cukor, hired him on the spot for the $50 dollars-a-week part.

Herman Frederick Crane’s mother had hoped that his education at the university of Tulane and Loyola would lead to a career in banking.

But he was more impressed by films, especially as his aunt Leatrice Joy, had been a siren of the silent screen, attracting the matinee heart-throb, John Gilbert, as her husband.

So he was glad to accompany Leatrice’s daughter, also Leatrice, to the Selznick studio, where she was unsuccessful in her audition for the role of Scarlett’s sister, Suellen.

But Crane, all 6ft 2ins of him, was on the verge of stardom, cast as the twin Brent Tarleton.

When the film came out in 1939, Crane was the victim of another quirk of fate. George Bessolo, who changed his name to George Reeves and later became a TV Superman, was wrongly billed as Brent and Crane as the other twin, Stuart.

The mistake was not corrected, but it did not damage Crane’s most recent career as the last surviving male lead from the film, though Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Hamilton) is still alive.

Crane, married five times with four children, had a wonderful voice on radio and appeared in TV shows such as Surfside 6, Lawman and Lost in Space.

Fred Crane, actor, born March 22, 1918; died August 21, 2008.