Crane, William H(enry)

Crane, William H[enry] (1845–1928), actor. A native of Leicester, Massachusetts, he made his debut in 1863 as the Notary in The Daughter of the Regiment in Harriet Holman's touring company, with which he remained for eight seasons. He then played low comedian roles with the Alice Oates Light Opera. In 1874 Crane created the role of Le Blanc, another Notary, in the original Evangeline. Three years later he was first teamed with Stuart ROBSON [né Henry Robson Stuart] (1836–1903). Robson was born in Annapolis and made his acting debut in Baltimore in 1852. The comic actor performed with Laura Keene's company in New York, with Mrs. Drew at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and with William Warren in Boston before his celebrated partnership with Crane that would survive until 1889. Their initial success was as the quarreling neighbors in Our Boarding House (1877), followed by The Comedy of Errors (1878, revived 1885), Our Bachelors (1878), Sharps and Flats (1880), Twelfth Night (1881), My Mother‐in‐Law (1884), and their biggest success, The Henrietta (1887). After the team split, Crane continued to act until 1917. Among his most notable later roles were the manipulative, but sympathetic Hannibal Rivers in The Senator (1890), the seemingly innocent W. Farragut Gurney in For Money (1892), and the likable horse‐trader David Harum (1900). Robson continued to appear in some of his old roles, as well as in such vehicles as The Meddler (1898) and The Gadfly (1899). In the latter he was praised for his “wooden countenance, his staccato utterance, and his long familiar squeak.” In an age when many a clergyman regularly railed at theatre people, Robson took pleasure in maintaining a scrapbook filled with published accounts of erring ministers. Autobiography (Crane): Footprints and Echoes, 1927.