Cravenomena

Time and politics play funny tricks on our cultural memory. In this world, it is possible to be among the best-known stars of one generation -- only to be completely forgotten by the next. If you doubt that, consider the case of Mantan Moreland. Chances are, you have never heard of Moreland -- unless you're one of the handful of obsessive film fans who remember him as "Birmingham Brown," playing opposite of Sidney Toler and Roland Winters in the CHARLIE CHAN potboilers of ... Read More

I was a teenage Straight Man. Okay... so I am once again sacrificing truth upon the altar of a good lead. But admit it: "I was a middle-aged Straight Man" doesn't have quite the same zing, now does it? Among his many vocations, Craven has worked as a professional actor and, on several occasions (all of them, he admits, long after his teenage years), he has been cast as the Straight Man in a comic duo. Many Broadway musicals over the years ... Read More

Run, man, run. Though your lungs are splayed across your ribs like the tatters of a burst balloon, and your feet are hard lead cakes that send rivulets of white-hot thermite squirting through your nervous system every time they piston against the Times Square cobblestones below — run! Run like your life depends upon it. Because it surely does. There are more than a hundred men hot on your heels, shouting epithets, their teeth bared like dogs and glinting in the pale glow of ... Read More