- Nick Cravat
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Nick Cravat Born January 11, 1912
New York City, New York, USADied January 29, 1994 (aged 82)
Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USAOccupation Actor, stunt performer Years active 1949-1977 Nick Cravat (January 11, 1912 – January 29, 1994) was an American film actor. His real name was Nicholas Cuccia (pronounced coo cha). "Cravat" was a stage name based on a character in a play he had seen and rather liked.
Cravat and Burt Lancaster met as youngsters[1] at a summer camp in New York and became lifelong friends. They created an acrobatic act, "Lang and Cravat", in the early 1930s and joined the Kay Brothers circus in Florida.[2] The pair worked at various circuses and in vaudeville. In 1939, however, Lancaster suffered a hand injury that ended their act. They would reunite later.
He co-starred with Lancaster in nine films, of which The Crimson Pirate and The Flame and the Arrow are the best-known. He played a mute character in several movies, notably The Flame and the Arrow, The Crimson Pirate, and Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, mostly because his thick Brooklyn accent would have been out of place. The acrobatic Cravat also played the "gremlin" on the wing of an airplane in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" starring William Shatner.
Cravat died on January 30, 1994, of lung cancer according to his daughter Tina.[1] He was interred at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
References
- ^ a b "Nick Cravat; Actor, 82 (obituary)". The New York Times. February 2, 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/02/obituaries/nick-cravat-actor-82.html.
- ^ Tina Cuccia-Cravat (April 2010). "Nick Cravat". nickcravat.com. http://nickcravat.com/. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
External links
Categories:- American film actors
- American television actors
- 1912 births
- 1994 deaths
- Deaths from lung cancer
- Cancer deaths in California
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