Been followin' this, and thinkin' on it some. On 'merican cars, it seems to me that the early fifties or late forties Jeep brand cars still had a hole in the front valance for a crank, but I don't know if there was provision on the crankshaft nose for it; y'know, now that I think aome more on it, I think that hole was still there on Jeep pickups and the small wagons in the early sixties. Also, '38 Chevy had a hole in the grille, and '39 or '40 Ford, I think. But, in general, the crank disappeared about 1939 or so, I believe.
I taught both of my boys to drive in a truck with a floor shift and granny low, and included instruction in push starting. They took it all in just as part of the way things were. When the oldest was in college, he called to shoot the breeze one evening, and related an anecdote about an experience he'd had a few days earlier: one of his frat brothers had a really nicely restored '65 Mustang (daddy's money), and had left the lights on and run the battery down. Tom tried to tell him how to clutch start it in reverse by rolling it down the driveway, but the kid just got it out in the street, and was sort of stuck, so Tom went out and gave it a little shove down the street and started it; they thought he was some sort of superman, that that was the most amazing thing they'd ever seen.