Bob Crane
From Philosopedia
Bob Edward Crane (13 July 1928 - 29 June 1978)
Crane, a disc jockey who became an Emmy Award-nominated actor, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut.
The youngest of the two sons of Rosemary (Sench) and Alfred T. Crane, he developed the reputation in high school for not only being the class clown but also one who fantasized about becoming a drummer like Buddy Rich, one of the best known at that time. At age sixteen, he began drumming for the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra but was let go after two years for clowning around during a Bach fugue.
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Marriages
In 1949, he married Ann Terzian, his high school sweetheart, and they had three children - Robert David, Deborah Ann, and Karen Leslie.
They divorced in June 1970, after which on 16 October 1970 he married Patricia Olson; they had a daughter Ana and son Scott; and a stepdaughter, Melissa Suzanne. Olson's stage name was Sigrid Valdis, and she played Hilda, Colonel Klink's secretary on Hogan's Heroes. At the time of her death from lung cancer in 2007, she had two daughters (Ana and Melissa), one son (Scott), one granddaughter, and four grandsons.
Radio Days
In radio, Crane worked with WLEA in Hornell, New York; WBIS in Briston, Connecticut; WICC in Bridgeport; and WEEI in Boston. In 1956, moving to California, he worked in Los Angeles at KNX Radio and became known as "king of the airwaves" and the jockey whose morning show had guests including Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra.
Television and Movies
A substitute for Johnny Carson on "Who Do You Trust?" - Variety once reported that he turned down the chance to be Carson's replacement - Crane acted on shows like "The Twilight Zone," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and "General Electric Theater." When Carl Reiner guested on the KNX show, Crane persuaded him to book him on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in 1961. This was where Donna Reed saw him and cast him in the recurring role as neighbor Dr. Dave Kelsey (1963-1965). He also acted small roles in the dramatic films "Return to Peyton Place" and "Man-Trap."
According to Reel Reviews, Crane in 1965
- was offered the starring role in a television comedy pilot about Allied prisoners in a German P.O.W. camp, "Hogan's Heroes." The character of the wisecracking Colonel Robert Hogan fit Crane like a glove, and the show, which had the rebellious spirit of "Stalag 17" and "The Great Escape," became a hit, finishing in the top ten during the 1965-66 season. The basic concept was that Hogan and his team led the Nazis (well played by Werner Klemperer and John Banner) to believe that the camp was escape-proof so that they could continue their secret activities. There was some controversy at the beginning as to whether this kind of material was appropriate for a sitcom, but that soon passed. "Hogan's Heroes" went on for six seasons, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy twice, in 1966 and 1967. During this time, Crane met Patricia Olsen, who played Hilda on "Hogan's Heroes," under the stage name, Sigrid Valdis. Crane divorced his wife of twenty years, and married Patricia on the set of the show in 1970. They had a son, Scotty, the following year.
- After "Hogan's Heroes" was cancelled in 1971, Crane continued to act, appearing in two Disney films, Superdad (1974) and Gus (1976), and had numerous guest spots on TV shows like "Police Woman," "Ellery Queen," "Quincy," and "The Love Boat." He had his own TV show "The Bob Crane Show" in 1975, but it was cancelled by NBC after three months.
His Who's Who in America 1976-1977 entry included the following:
- In a country such as ours, no goal is too high, no ambition unobtainable, so long as we have books to read and learn from. Knowledge and determination equals success.
Cause of Death: Crushed Skull
According to Reel Reviews, on Wednesday, June 28, 1978, after completing an evening performance and signing autographs for fans in the lobby,
- Crane returned briefly to his apartment with a longtime friend, Los Angeles video equipment salesclerk John Carpenter. Before they left again, Patricia called Bob, and according to Carpenter, the estranged couple argued loudly on the phone. Thereafter, Crane and Carpenter adjourned to a local bar, where they had drinks with two women whom they had arranged to meet. At about 2:00 A.M., the quartet went to the Safari coffee shop on Scottsdale Road. About half an hour later, John Carpenter left to pack for his return trip to Los Angeles the next morning. Back at his hotel room, he called Crane one final time. Crane was allegedly considering ending his lifestyle of heavy partying, and was therefore tired of hangers-on like Carpenter. During this last phone call, Bob reportedly told Carpenter that their friendship was over.
- Crane's co-star in Beginner's Luck, Victoria Berry, knocked on Crane's door at Winfield Place Apartments at around 2 in the afternoon of June 29. The door to apartment 132-A was closed, but Berry told police that she found it unlocked. She entered the apartment and found the room dark. She walked into the bedroom: "… At first, I thought it was a girl with long dark hair, because all the blood had turned real dark. I thought, 'Oh, Bob's got a girl here. Now where's Bob?…' I thought, 'Well, she's done something to herself. Bob has gone to get help.' At that time, I recognized blood… it was like a strange feeling."
- She took a closer look and realized what she was looking at. "the whole wall was covered from one end to the other with blood. And I just sort of stood there and I was numb. He was curled up in a fetus position, on his side, and he had a cord tied around his neck in a bow." Oddly, Berry is the only one who recalled seeing the cord tied in a bow. The crime scene photos and police reports reveal no bow.
The ghastly photos of TV's Colonel Hogan were widely publicized, as were the details of his secret extra-marital sex life (that allegedly included his desire to videotape himself and his female sex partner in various sexual acts). There had been no physical signs of a struggle, and an autopsy had determined that Crane had been asleep when the fatal blow to the left side of his head was struck. The police theorized, according to Reel Reviews that the killer was someone that Crane knew, a person who before the homicide had left the apartment, but then returned through the front door or a window that he or she had left unlocked earlier. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner was able to provide a partial chronology. Somewhere in the early hours of Thursday, June 29, while Bob slept on his right side, his assailant struck a heavy blow on the left side of his head with a blunt object. A second, lighter blow crushed Crane's skull. The killer tied a video-camera electrical cord tightly around the actor's neck, but by that time, Crane was already dead. Before fleeing, the killer wiped the blood off the murder weapon onto the bed sheets and then pulled the sheet up around the victim's head. Cash was found in Crane's wallet, which eliminated any robbery motive.
Robert Graysmith's The Murder of Bob Crane: Who Killed the Star of Hogan's Heroes? (Crown, 1993) describes Carpenter, a video salesman, as Crane's constant companion and implies there was a homosexual motive for the killing. Carpenter, said to have always failed to score on double-dates with Crane who sometimes scored twice daily, once entered into a plea bargain with Los Angeles's police for molesting female minors.
Although Carpenter was a preliminary suspect in Crane's murder, during a jury trial the jurors took three days to find Carpenter not guilty. There had been insufficient evidence to convict him. Carpenter died in 1994, never admitting any guilt. Crane's murder remains one of Hollywood's unsolved mysteries. A film based on Crane's life, Auto Focus, was released in 2002, and starred Greg Kinnear as Crane.
- Crane's and Valdis's Gravestone, Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles
Crane was not a member of any organized religion. He read widely in the humanities, including works that were humorous, pornographic, and literary. A humanities humanist and a sybarite, he was according to his friends and other actors admittedly obsessed with sex. The gravestone includes a poem, "Wild Wheat," that can be interpreted as appreciating libidinal pleasures and concluding that "Wild Wheat Will Never Die." It is signed Patricia Crane, his wife's maiden name, and Humanist, a reference to secular humanism. This is followed by the Darwin fish, the evolutionists' symbol.
