The first year; a comic tragedy of married life, in three acts
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Frank Craven was an American actor, playwright, and director.
Background
Frank Craven was born on August 24, 1875 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His father, John T. Craven, and his mother, Ella (Mayer) Craven, both natives of New York state, were members of the famed Boston Theater company, and he had a brother who was also an actor. Frank Craven made the characteristic debut of a child of a theatrical family when at an early age he spoke a few lines in the melodrama The Silver King while clinging to his mother's skirts. During much of his childhood he trouped with his parents in many major cities--Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Boston--in the popular plays of the stock-company repertory, including David Copperfield, A Celebrated Case, and Blow for Blow.
Education
His mother educated him until he was about nine, when he was sent to a school in Plympton, Massachussets, where he stayed with friends while his parents were on tour. Later he attended a school in Reading, Massachussets, living on a farm and working in a sawmill and a tack factory until his late teens.
Career
Despite his early experience in the theater, Frank had no desire to become an actor. His father wanted him to go into business; but after a short and unsuccessful experience as a mail clerk in a Boston insurance office, Craven returned to the stage, joining his father in Baltimore and playing the part of an old man in The Silver King, in which he had made his childhood debut. He first appeared in New York in 1907 as Walter Marshall in Artie. It was not until after an apprenticeship of four years in minor parts, however, that he achieved a role that brought him his first personal success: the brash shipping clerk Jimmy Gilley in George Broadhurst's Bought and Paid For, produced in New York in 1911 by William A. Brady. Craven was not enthusiastic about the part. He had become more interested in writing for the theater than in acting after contributing The Curse of Cain's, a show business skit, to a Lambs' Club "Gambol" in 1908, and he was earning as much as $200 a week for his sketches for vaudeville performers. But he had promised Broadhurst to appear in his play and could readily use the four or five weeks' salary, which was as long as he thought the play would last. Instead, it ran for 431 performances and was shown in San Francisco and in London. Craven provided the comic relief in this melodrama, and the audience, it is said, "simply hung on his lips, waiting for the next laugh. " He had no faith in the glowing praise of his friends on opening night and was greatly surprised to find himself the star of a hit show. During the run of Bought and Paid For Craven declined many offers for similar roles, still preferring writing to acting. But since producers would bring out his plays only if he promised to star in them, he appeared in his own Too Many Cooks (1914) and This Way Out (1917). In 1920 The First Year, produced by John Golden, with whom he was to be long associated, was, according to Burns Mantle, "the outstanding comedy success" of the season. Among the many other productions with which he was associated as actor, writer, or director were The Nineteenth Hole (1927), That's Gratitude (1930), and Riddle Me This (1932), as both author and actor; and Whistling in the Dark (1932) and A Touch of Brimstone (1935), as director. Beginning in 1929 Craven devoted much of his creative life to motion pictures, where he also functioned as actor, writer, and director. Among the many films in which he appeared were State Fair (1933), City Limits (1934), and Miracles for Sale (1939). The special qualities of Frank Craven as a man and as an artist were best revealed to stage and screen audiences in the role which he himself called the "ideal Craven part"--that of the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, produced by Jed Harris in 1938 and two years later made into a film in which Craven collaborated with the author on the scenario.
His "pipe-in-mouth, hands-in-pocket informality" made him, as Bosley Crowther said of his screen interpretation of the Stage Manager, "the perfect New England Socrates--earnest, sincere, and profound. "
Frank Craven died of a heart ailment in 1945 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, shortly after completing his last film, Colonel Effingham. Following Episcopal services, he was buried in the family plot in Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.
Achievements
He is best known for his performance as the stage manager in his production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (performed 1938) and for his domestic comedy The First Year (1920).
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Views
Quotations:
"I don't think there is a town of 5000 in this country that I have missed. It's too bad kids can't troupe like that nowadays. You met people, studied dialects, and it was good to get away from the narrow world of Broadway. "
Personality
Affable, genial, and humorous, he brought to the part, which was a combination of Chinese property man and Greek chorus, the same homespun qualities that had marked his earlier roles.
Connections
Craven had married the actress Mary Blyth (divorced wife of the actor Arnold Daly) in Stamford, Connecticut, on May 8, 1914. They had a son, John, who appeared with his father in several plays, notably as George Gibbs in Our Town.
