Robert Crean was an award-winning dramatic writer for television and theatre. A devout Catholic, he explored many of the dilemmas of post-vatican II Catholicism and other religious and ethical themes in his work.
He was born in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts in 1924 and attended a nearby high school. The performing arts fascinated him, and while still in high school, he obtained an interview with Jeannette MacDonald, which was printed under his by-line in the Springfield (Mass.) Daily News. After graduation he worked for a year as a reporter and copydesk editor for the Springfield Morning Union. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II as a gunsight specialist and was discharged as a corporal in 1947. Crean then free-lanced before studying drama at Catholic University under Father Gilbert Hartke and attending Walter Kerr's lecture series. Also there he met Katy Simonaitis, whom he married in 1951 after he received his BA and she her MA in drama.
From 1951 to 1954 they lived in Washington D.C. where Crean worked as a staff member and TV columnist for the Standard and a reporter and editor for NCWC News Service. However, he decided that he must be in New York if his career as a playwright was to take shape. Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy took him on as a staff writer and later promoted him to chief writer. His 1956 “Anna Santonello” on Kraft Television Theatre was the first script to attract favorable critical notice. Other scripts were produced as specials and on such series as The Defenders, Armstrong Circle Theatre, East Side, West Side, Trials of O'Brien, The Virginian, and The Catholic Hour. From 1960 to 1968 a great number of his scripts were shown on The Catholic Hour, of which the most outstanding was the four-part series “Prejudice - U.S.A.” This series won numerous awards, including the National Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the American Jewish Congress Award, the Thomas Edison Award, and a first prize at the International Film Festival at Monaco.
In 1960 Crean temporarily withdrew from television writing to concentrate on writing for the legitimate stage. His first play for Broadway, A Time to Laugh, was produced in 1962 by his personal friend, Sir Tyrone Guthrie. Crean objected to the practise common on television of revising scripts to fit the fancy of the sponsor, the star, or the producer; he much preferred to write for the stage, where material can only be revised with the author's approval. Despite this preference, he soon returned to writing for television and wrote such outstanding material as “My Mother and My Father” shown on CBS Playhouse in 1968.
Crean died in May 1974, and is survived by his wife and ten children.
