ME AND BUCK ROGERS

....AND THE MAN WITH SOMETHING ODD IN HIS BAG

Larry “Buster” Crabbe and Jean Peters in the 1936 serial Flash Gordon.

The excellent Public Domain Movies (see foot of this post) offering the 1953 serial Planet Outlaws, starring Larry “Buster” Crabbe, reminded me of my meeting with this interesting, if not overly gifted, Hollywood star.

Living in London in the ‘seventies and working as a programmer for the National Film Theatre, I was the go-to choice to host appearances by the more marginal personalities; B-film directors, stunt men, and serial stars.

“Buster Crabbe?” I said, when the Deputy Controller suggested I handle the on-stage interview. “I haven’t seen anything of him in years.”

“Apparently he’s retired to the swimming pool business, in Arizona.”

“Don’t tell me he has a movie out, after all this time.”

“No, a book. All he asks is that we let him promote it.”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “We generally do, for memoirs.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly a memoir,” said the Controller. “It’s about…well, arthritis.”

“Arthritis?”

“Apparently he has some miracle cure. But look, if you’d rather not ….”

“No, he’s exactly the kind of person who interests me,” I said. “I just wonder if anyone will come. Arthritis. Blimey. ”

I shouldn’t have worried. Science fiction, fantasy and horror films have a devoted following, and the cheesier the product, the more eager the fans. The NFT was packed for our conversation.

White-haired and tanned, Larry Crabbe was energetic for a man in his late sixties – a condition he attributed to an exercise regime that freed him from the near-paralysis of arthritis. One could easily see in him the former Olympic swimming gold medalist who, under a blonde pompadour hair-do, saved the universe forty years before as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

About that hair….

“I’m not naturally blonde,” Crabbe explained, “but they wanted me to look like the Flash of the comic books, so they hauled out the peroxide. Got me into a lot of fights in elevators.”

“Elevators?”

“Well, I’d been taught it was good manners to take off my hat if a lady got in. When guys saw my hair, some of them made…” His voice hardened. “...comments. You know - the ‘Hello, blondie’ kinda thing? So I had to...explain a few things to them.”

The NFT practice of reserving the front row of seats for sale on the day ensured that guests faced the cream of the crazies, including those fanatics eager to dominate the Q&A period with nit-picking queries about apprentice obscurities which invitees hoped were long forgotten. “You saw that thing?” said more than one victim, turning to the interviewer with a mute plea to get them out of this.

One was automatically wary of questions from under one’s nose – which may explain why I didn’t initially suspect the man who stood up in the very back row.

“I’d like to say..,” he began.

There’s a tone of voice, strangled and nasal, that marks a person nervous about speaking in public – an effect not helped in this man’s case by a cheap plastic raincoat, the kind that closed tight at the collar.

“I’d just like to say,” he went on, “that I don’t think you ever had the kind of appreciation you deserve.”

“That’s very kind,“ Crabbe said modestly. “Some say my acting rose to the level of incompetence, and then leveled off.”

“Errol Flynn too,” the man went on. “They never gave him an Oscar, though they should have….”

“Do you have a question?” I interjected. “Because there are other people….”

“Not a question so much as….” He held up a plastic shopping bag. “I want to give something to Mr. Crabbe.”

Give something? I heard alarm bells. To judge from Crabbe’s panicky glance at me, he felt the same.

Taking our silence for approval, the man inched past his neighbours and stepped into the aisle, bag heavy in his hand. Is that how a bomb would look in a shopping bag? A revolver?

Mounting the stage, he stepped into the circle of hot light that now seemed to pin Crabbe and myself in its glare. With a nervous smile at the audience, he dipped into the bag, and withdrew….

Some sort of statuette? A trophy….?

“On behalf of the Errol Flynn Appreciation Society,” he announced, “I wish to present this Award to Mr. Buster Crabbe for his contribution to action cinema.”

Beaming, mostly with relief, Crabbe rose to accept the trophy. I focused on the anodised figurine on top. Was it supposed to be Errol Flynn? Once, perhaps, it might have resembled him, but now, with the details blurred by repeated casting, it was just an impression of someone striking a heroic pose – like Flynn himself, more myth than man, and, I reminded myself, another Australian who, like myself, as the old song ran, “left his country for his country’s good.”