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Buster
Crabbe Tarzan Movies for Sale
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| Buster Crabbe
graduated from the University of Southern California. In 1931,
while working on That's My Boy for Columbia, he was tested by
MGM for Tarzan and rejected. Paramount put him in "King
of the Jungle" as Kaspa, the Lion Man (after a book of
that title but clearly a copy of the Tarzan stories).
Publicity for this movie emphasized his having won the 1932
Olympic 400-meter free-style swimming championship and
suggested a rivalry with Weissmuller. Sol Lesser wanted him
for an independent Tarzan (the Fearless), though he first had
to get James Pierce to waive rights to the part already
granted by his father-in-law, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The film
was released as both a feature and a serial; most houses
showed only the first serial episode which critics panned as a
badly organized feature. Just prior to the film's release he
married his college sweetheart and gave himself one year to
either make it as an actor or start law school at USC.
Paramount put him in a number of Zane Grey westerns, then
Universal put him in very successful sci-fi serials (Flash
Gordon, Buck Rogers) 1936-40. In 1940 he did a string of Billy
the Kid westerns. After World War II he did acted only
occasionally, devoting much of his time to his swimming pool
corporation and operation of a boys' camp in New York. |
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