Fred Crane, radio announcer, actor, at 90

LOS ANGELES - Fred Crane, a former longtime announcer on a Los Angeles classical music radio station who achieved a slice of film immortality as an actor who played one of the handsome Tarleton twins in the 1939 movie classic "Gone With the Wind," has died. He was 90.

Mr. Crane, who had been hospitalized for a few weeks with diabetes-related complications, died of a blood clot in his lung Thursday in a hospital near Atlanta, said his wife, Terry.

Mr. Crane was the oldest surviving adult male cast member of "Gone With the Wind," producer David O. Selznick's epic production of the Margaret Mitchell novel.

"I'm just a small shard in a grand mosaic," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2007.

As Brent Tarleton, one of Scarlett O'Hara's young suitors, Mr. Crane spoke the opening lines in the film in a scene on the front porch of Tara with Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and George Reeves as his twin, Stuart.

"What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett?" he says. "The war is gonna start any day now, so we would have left school anyhow."

After Brent and Stuart express their excitement over the prospect of a fight with the Yankees, Scarlet replies: "Fiddle-de-de. War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream."

When he was cast in "Gone With the Wind," the 20-year-old Mr. Crane had not read Mitchell's best-selling novel and wasn't even looking for a role in the film.

A New Orleans native, Mr. Crane attended Tulane and Loyola universities in New Orleans and acted in local theater productions.

In 1938, his mother gave him $50 and a one-way train ticket to Hollywood.

After arriving, Mr. Crane contacted his cousin, former silent-film actress Leatrice Joy, who took him to the Selznick studio, where her daughter was auditioning for the role of Scarlett's sister, Suellen.

Evelyn Keyes wound up playing Suellen, but Mr. Crane's Southern accent caught the attention of the casting director, who called director George Cukor, and together they took Mr. Crane to meet Selznick.

"I read the opening scene right then and there with Vivien Leigh, and I got the job," Mr. Crane told the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1999. He was put under a 13-week contract for $50 a week, which, he said, was "more money than I thought there was in the world."

Mr. Crane became a part-time announcer at Los Angeles classical radio station KFAC in 1946. He continued to act, mostly in television, until the mid-1960s, when he began working full time at KFAC.

Mr. Crane, who also became program director of the AM side of the station in the '70s along with serving as host of his own shows, was among the station's old guard who were fired in 1987 by the station's new owners. He and the others later won an age discrimination suit, said Mr. Crane's son, David.

In 2000, Mr. Crane and his wife, Terry, bought an antebellum mansion in Barnesville, Ga., a town south of Atlanta. They turned it into a bed and breakfast, complete with a "Gone With the Wind" museum.

In 2007, primarily due to Mr. Crane's medical problems, the couple auctioned off the house and its memorabilia.

In addition to his wife, he leaves five children, Haydee, Terry Lynn Smith, Shelley Bruehl, David, and Jason; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Mr. Crane married five times.