Remembering Richard Crenna

Richard Donald Crenna was born on November 30, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. He began his career when he was eleven years old, playing the dimmer half of two youngsters called Herman and Sam in the Los Angeles radio show "Boy Scout Jamboree". He stayed with the series on and off for seventeen years, doing hundreds of other radio shows in between and somehow managed to graduate from Belmont High School with letters in track and basketball. He then went on to earn a degree from the University of Southern California. Crenna went on to star in two early television hits, “Our Miss Brooks” (1952) and “The Real McCoys” (1957), but it was his role as the dedicated state legislator in the short-lived “Slattery’s People” (1964), which finally established him both as a dramatic actor and leading man. From that moment on, he was rarely absent from either television or motion pictures. In 1985, Crenna was awarded a TV Emmy for Best Performance by an Actor for “The Rape of Richard Beck” (1985). Crenna appeared in three Euro-westerns “Catlow” and “The Deserter” (both 1971) and “A Man Called Noon” (1973). Richard died on January 17, 2003 in Los Angeles. Today we remember Richard Crenna on what would have been his 85th birthday.