William H. Crane

William Henry Crane (April 30, 1845 – March 7, 1928) was an American actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1870 to 1913. Born in Leicester, Massachusetts, he grew up in Boston and completed his schooling at Brimmer School.

Crane made his first professional stage appearance on July 13, 1865, in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment in Utica, New York. His early career in legitimate drama was defined by a twelve-year partnership with Stuart Robson, during which the two performed The Comedy of Errors and other Shakespearean productions. Among the notable credits from this period was the Victorian burlesque Evangeline (1873), in which Crane played Le Blanc the Notary, and The Henrietta (1881), written by Bronson Howard and performed alongside Robson. A later Broadway production, The New Henrietta, revisited that material.

Following the end of his partnership with Robson, Crane took on a range of eccentric character roles. He appeared in The Senator, David Harum, The American Lord, The Spenders, and The Senator Keeps House, among other productions. In 1904 he moved toward more serious dramatic work, playing Isidore Izard in Business is Business, an adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les Affaires.

In his seventies, Crane extended his work into film. He reprised his stage role in the 1915 screen version of David Harum and appeared in several other productions including The Lamb (1915), The Saphead (1920), Souls for Sale (1923), Three Wise Fools (1923), True as Steel (1924), and So This Is Marriage (1924). Three Wise Fools, produced by MGM, was later preserved and made available through Turner Classic Movies and on home video.

Crane married Ella Chloe Myers in 1870 and remained married to her until his death. Outside the theater, he was an avid yachtsman and served as a founding officer of the Cohasset Yacht Club, established in 1894. His yacht bore the name Senator, the same as one of his well-known stage roles. Crane maintained a summer residence in Cohasset, Massachusetts, which he called the Fishing Box. He died on March 7, 1928, at the Hollywood Hotel at the age of 82.