DID YOU KNOW

ABOUT BUSTER CRABBE?

BY BRUCE WIGO PHOTOS BY INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME

Larry “Buster” Crabbe had won a bronze medal in the 1500 meters at Amsterdam in 1928. At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, he was the only American man to win a swimming gold medal—in the 400 free.

His success at the Games—and his rugged good looks—led him to be picked as one of 40 Olympic athletes invited to Paramount Pictures for screen tests. When Paramount signed him to a contract, he dropped out of law school at the University of Southern California and went on to star in more than 170 films on screen and television.

He starred in popular Hollywood serials such as “Flash Gordon,” “Buck Rogers” and “Billy the Kid.” He challenged Johnny Weissmuller by starring as “Tarzan” in two films, and on television, he was “Captain Gallant of the French Foreign Legion.” He also was the male lead in the Billy Rose Aquacade and later produced his own Aquacade water shows that performed all over the world.

At the peak of his fame in the early 1950s, Buster Crabbe Comics appeared. “Unlike most actors,” read the promotional materials, “Buster Crabbe is actually every bit the he-man he portrays in his movie roles! His superb physique and extraordinary strength was acquired by living the part, not by acting it!”

The stories were a mix of real life and the characters he played in the movies. In one, for example, he was in Rio de Janeiro, representing the United States at a swimming meet when “he meets tougher competition than he bargained for and finds that the race is ‘The Swim for Life.’”

He had a popular line of swimming pools, operated a summer camp for boys in upstate New York, and he wrote books on exercise and the benefits of swimming for people with arthritis.

He was in the first class of honorees at the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and he jumped back in the competition pool when U.S. Masters Swimming was formed in 1971. He was a member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and was a member of the 1984 Los Angeles Games Olympic Organizing Committee.

Tragically, he died of a heart attack in April of 1983, probably brought on by years of smoking, something he became addicted to shortly after becoming a national spokesman for Camel Cigarettes— the first sponsor to sign him to a contract after the 1932 Olympic Games.

Buster’s movie costumes, Olympic medals and memorabilia and his scrapbooks are all on display at the ISHOF museum.v

>> Buster Crabbe Comics: “The Swim for Life”

Bruce Wigo, historian and consultant at the International Swimming Hall of Fame, served as president/CEO of ISHOF from 2005-17.