John Craven

John Craven will be remembered as the lad who dreamed of love and the moon atop a stepladder in the Broadway version of "Our Town" for a season and another on the road, while his father, Frank Craven, officiated as the genial Stage Manager and commentator of that play. Originally intending to be a surgeon, John was deflected by heredity to an assistant stage managership in "Babes in Arms." He had a busy career on Broadway and in film from the 1930s through the 1950s. He slipped into movies quietly, with a minor role in The Human Comedy (1943), but he played an orphaned young soldier with fine simplicity. There was a quality of entirely masculine sweetness in his face missing from the screen since Richard Barthelmess starred in the silents. Actually, John was hardly an unknown: Hollywood was strangely late in discovering him, as he played leads in Broadway plays for four years. The handicap of a famous father may have slowed his start, due to such comments as, "Oh yes - Frank Craven's