Nick Cravat appeared in both films and TV shows throughout his career that began in the late 1940s. He is the "gremlin" on the wing of an airplane in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and he appeared alongside George Dolenz in The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1956 British cult swashbuckler adventure television series.

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He grew up in the Italian section of East Harlem, New York City. Burt Lancaster lived close by in the Irish section of the neighborhood. They met at age of nine through the neighborhood's Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses, where kids hung out after school and took part in activities and summer programs offer at Union Settlement. Nick and Burt met there and became lifelong friends.

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It was at the Union Settlement where Nick and Burt became mesmerized by an Australian gymnast named Curly who taught them gymnastics and acrobatics on the horizontal bar. The two subsequently formed an act called, "Lang and Cravat. My father by that time had taken the stage name, “Cravat,” because his surname “Cuccia” was hard to pronounce and, at the time, it was hard for Italians to get work, he explained to me one time. 

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Just teenagers, they ran off to join the circus. My grandmother bought them a used car and they drove down to Florida from New York, chasing the Kay Brothers Circus. They ended up joining.

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In time, they added to their act with a high pole spectacle. Burt climbed up a pole that my father balanced on his forehead and continued with their horizontal bars act. They took their act to Vaudeville and continued to perform until an injury forced Burt to give up the bars. Nick continued  to perform and developed an act with his wife, Arlene, who was a dancer.

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Burt went on to find temporary work and then joined the United State Army serving as an entertainer in the war for a couple years. Soon after, he was discovered by a producer in an elevator at Marshall Field’s in Chicago, while visiting his girlfriend, Norma, who he later married, who worked in the department store.

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After being discovered, Burt appeared in a play, "A Sound of Hunting," and soon was on his way to Hollywood. Nick joined him several years later to revive their acrobatic and gymnastic skills in “The Flame in the Arrow,” which launched Nick’s film career and led to the swashbuckler film, "The Crimson Pirate." 

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Being the daughter of an actor offered some unique adventures for my sister, Marcelina and me, such as being exposed to the process of film making, disagreements with directors, hearing about issues with scripts at the dinner table, and being on set watching the same scene filmed over and over from the sidelines.