Clarence Linden Crabbe II, better known by his nickname Buster Crabbe, was an American two-time Olympic swimmer and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.
Crabbe at age 20 at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam
Crabbe watches "Jack", one of the lions in King of the Jungle, eating lunch in a Hollywood restaurant in 1933. Crabbe became a lion tamer while working on that adventure film.
Buster Crabbe with real life son Cullen on Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, ca. 1955
Tarzan is a fictional character, a feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.
Tarzan's first appearance, in the October 1912 issue of The All-Story
Illustration by James Allen St. John for Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Tarzan in a display at an Ankara amusement park
Tarzan's agility, speed, and strength allow him to kill a leopard in 1921's The Adventures of Tarzan.
