What happened to one of my favorite actors, Buster Crabbe?
—Adelia Snellings, Lincolnton, Ga.
The All-American swimmer for the University of Southern California won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle event at the 1932 Summer Olympics and proceeded to portray Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in the movies. He made a series of low-budget Westerns in the 1940s and starred in the TV series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion with his son, Cullen, from 1955 to 1957. As his acting career waned, Crabbe began an association with a swimming pool company that lasted more than 30 years, and he operated a boys camp in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. He died in 1983 at age 75 of a heart attack.
