Fred Crane (actor) Fred Crane (actor) Fred Crane, Herman Frederick Crane, (March 22, 1918 – August 21, 2008) was an American film and television actor and radio announcer. He is probably best known for his role as Brent Tarleton in the 1939 film, "Gone with the Wind", speaking the opening lines in the movie during the opening scene with Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Stuart Tarleton (George Reeves). Crane was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1918. Along with his brothers John and Harry, he grew up on General Pershing St. and went to the MacDonough #13 and Alsace Fortier schools. His father
Gone with the Wind (novel) "Gone With the Wind", Margaret Mitchell hesitated to blame black 'insolence' during Reconstruction solely on 'mean niggers', of which, she said, there were few even in slavery days." Critics say that Mitchell downplayed the violent role of the Ku Klux Klan and their abuse of freedmen. Author Pat Conroy, in his preface to a later edition of the novel, describes Mitchell's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as having "the same romanticized role it had in "The Birth of a Nation" and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society". Regarding the historical