Gone with the Wind Actor Still Cashes In

In Atlanta this week, The Atlanta Constitution reports on a first acting job. Fred Crane played a young man trying to charm Scarlett O'Hara. At age 89, Crane still banks on his role in "Gone With The Wind." He is auctioning off memorabilia from the famous movie that we all love. Fred Crane never claimed to be an actor, but he certainly acted like one as he welcomed guests to his antebellum home south of Atlanta.

"Would you sign my book?" asked Louis Battle, a fan who had driven up from Savannah. Crane gave her a crinkly smile and neatly inscribed both his names. Battle melted with delight. "Thank You, Brent Tarleton, you handsome devil you." Crane- or Brent Tarleton, as film buffs know him- is one of the last links to the movie that made Atlanta famous. Almost 89, he's the only loving male actor who appeared as an adult in "Gone With The Wind."

"I'm just a small shard in a grand mosaic," he said, with a well-rehearsed poetic flourish. "I'm the last man standing." For the past few years, Crane has held forth as the master of Tarleton Oaks, a white-columned home built a decade before the Civil War in Barnesville, down the road from Margaret Mitchell's fictional Tara. He and his wife turned it into a bed-and-breakfast inn an decked it with "GWTW," memorabilia, entertaining visitors with stories about the legendary 1939 movie in which he played one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors. But all players face that final curtain. Because of age and infirmity- Crane has diabetes nd has had two heart bypasses- the couple decided to downsize. This week in Barnsville, they will auction off their home and all the bric-a-brac Crane collected over the years, from a Vivien Leigh cigarette case to a Clark Gable travel kit that includes a comb still smelling of his hair tonic. "Everything is for sale," said Terry Lynn Crane, who's 40 years younger than her husband. She jokingly refers to him as her favorite "Gone With The Wind" collectible.

At an auction preview party last weekend, several dozen "Windies," as the movie's biggest followers call themselves, gathered around Crane and listened to his name-dropping tales of old Hollywood. Though he has lost 50 pounds to illness, he still cut an elegant figure in his gray planter's suit and neat white beard. Every few minutes, he pulled out a gold harmonica and played a tune- "Dixie," mostly, with a little Bach thrown in for ballast. His wife stood next to him wearing a faux pearl necklace that had belong to Leigh and a gown that gaped open in front. "is this too-too?." she asked, particularly covering her daring decolletage with a shawl. Crane stared, momentarily speechless, and then launched into a story. It was his favorite one: How a 20-year old kid with no movie experience ended up speaking the first lines in one of the most ballyhooed movies ever made.

"I didn't want to go to Hollywood," he began. Crane was attending Loyola University in his native New Orleans when his mother decided in 1938 that he ought to go west and try to make it in the movies. in California, he met a cousin ho wanted to play one of Scarlett's sisters in David O. Selznick's much-awaited production of "Gone With The Wind." She asked if he wanted to go with her to the studio. "Selznick, Schmelznick," Crane said, with a chuckle. "I didn't know from Selznick. But I'd never seen a movie studio, so I went along." The casting director heard his accent and took him to see Selznick, who offered him a contract for $50 a week, saying, "Put your mark right there boy." All in 15 minutes.

As one of the Tarleton twins, Crane appears in the movie's opening scene, flirting with Scarlett before the barbecue at Twelve oaks. His line: "What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war is gonna start any day now, so we'd have left college anyhow."

Rumors say that Crane was offered $1.7 million for their property, which includes a 5,400 square foot house, more than two acres and an inn full of antiques and collectibles that took Crane seven decades to accumulate.