He was the Original Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers
Olympic Gold medalist Buster Crabbe probably would be completely forgotten today if not for the surviving generation of adults to whom Crabbe was a Saturday matinee hero. He was Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Billy the Kid all rolled into one during a long movie career spent toiling on the lower rungs of the Hollywood ladder. "I'd like to do one, just to say I was in an A picture after all these years," Crabbe once lamented. "But I'll never get an A picture. I never had the advantage of a big name director or producer. I always worked for the guys that turn out B pictures."Crabbe did achieve a kind of enduring fame that eluded many of his bigger name contemporaries working in prestige films. His movie career identified him with one of the great characters of 20th century entertainment and that gives him cult status. The popular "Flash Gordon" series inspired by Alex Raymond's influential comic strip is a major influence upon all science fiction that followed and provided Crabbe with a notoriety existing beyond his life span.
His low budget movie stardom was an unplanned accident all because of a gold medal. He was a law student and world class swimmer winning the Gold medal in the 400-meter race at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles and broke Johnny Weissmuller's record in the process. The margin of victory was narrow as Crabbe overtook Frenchman Jean Taris late in the race and winning in a time of 4:48:4 to 4:48:5. "That one-tenth of a second changed my life," he reflected. "It was then that Hollywood discovered latent histrionic abilities in me." Hollywood's discovery of the famous young athlete was no doubt aided by the fact his clean muscular frame was topped by a strikingly handsome head.
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