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Bob Crane

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For the biochemist, see Robert K. Crane.
Bob Crane
File:Bob Crane as Hogan.jpg
Bob Crane with future wife Sigrid Valdis on Hogan's Heroes
Born
Robert Edward Crane

(1928-07-13)July 13, 1928
Waterbury, Connecticut, United States
DiedJune 29, 1978(1978-06-29) (aged 49)
Scottsdale, Arizona, United States
OccupationActor
Years active1950–1978
Spouse(s)Anne Terzian (1949-1970)
Sigrid Valdis (1970-1978)

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane (July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978) was an American actor and disc jockey, best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E. Hogan in the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes from 1965 to 1971, and for his murder.

Bob Crane was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, but he spent his childhood and teenage years in Stamford, Connecticut.[1] He graduated from Stamford High School (Stamford, Connecticut) in 1946.[2] Music was always very important to Crane, and he started playing drums very early in life. By junior high, he was organizing local drum and bugle parades with his neighborhood friends in Stamford.[3] Later, he became very involved in his high school marching and jazz bands, as well as in the school’s orchestra.[4] He also played for the Connecticut Symphony and the Norwalk Symphony Orchestras as part of the youth orchestra program.[5] On June 21, 1948, Bob enlisted in the National Guard and was honorably discharged on May 1, 1950.[6] In 1949, he married high school sweetheart Anne Terzian, and they raised three children - Robert David, Deborah Ann, and Karen Leslie.[7] Bob and Anne were later divorced, and he married Patricia Olsen, an actress whose stage name was Sigrid Valdis. They had one son, Robert Scott Crane, and adopted a daughter, Ana Marie.

Career

Early career

In 1950, Crane started his broadcasting career at WLEA in Hornell, New York. He soon moved to WBIS in Bristol, Connecticut, followed by WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This was a 500-watt operation where he remained until 1956, when the CBS radio network plucked Crane out to help stop his huge popularity from affecting their own station's ratings. Crane moved his family to California to host the morning show at KNX radio in Hollywood. He filled the broadcast with sly wit, drumming, and guests such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope. It quickly became the number-one rated morning show in the LA area, with Crane known as "The King of the Los Angeles Airwaves."

Crane's acting ambitions led to his subbing for Johnny Carson on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? and appearances on The Twilight Zone, Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and General Electric Theater. When Carl Reiner appeared on his show, Crane persuaded him to book him for a guest shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show, where he was noticed by Donna Reed, who suggested him for the role of neighbor Dr. Dave Kelsey in her eponymous sitcom from 1963 through 1965.

Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971)

In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a television comedy pilot about a German P.O.W. camp. Hogan's Heroes became a hit and finished in the Top Ten in its first year on the air. The series lasted six seasons, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award twice, in 1966 and 1967. During its run, he met Patricia Olsen who played Hilda under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. He divorced his wife of twenty years and married Olsen on the set of the show in 1970. They had a son, Scotty (Robert Scott), and adopted a daughter named Ana Marie.

In addition to playing the drums on the theme song, Crane's musical talent can also be seen in the sixth season episode, "Look at the Pretty Snowflakes," where he has an extended drum solo during the prisoners' performance of the jazz standard "Cherokee".

In 1968, during the run of Hogan's Heroes, Crane and series costars Werner Klemperer, Leon Askin, and John Banner appeared, with Elke Sommer, in a feature film called The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz. The setting was the divided city of Berlin inside East Germany. Paula Schultz was being tempted to defect to the West, with Crane encouraging her to do so. Klemperer and Banner were involved as East German officials trying to keep Paula in the East.

Career after Hogan's Heroes (1973-1978)

Following the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes in 1971, Crane was frustrated that he was offered few quality roles. He appeared in two Disney films, 1973's Superdad with the title role and Gus from 1976 in a cameo.

In 1973, Crane purchased the rights to Beginner's Luck, a play that he starred in and directed. The production toured for five years, predominantly at dinner theatres from Florida to California to Texas, Hawaii and Arizona in 1978.[8] During breaks, he guest starred in a number of TV shows, including Police Woman, Quincy, M.E., and The Love Boat. A second series of his own, 1975's The Bob Crane Show, was canceled by NBC after three months.

Crane's murder

During the run of Hogan's Heroes, sitcom costar Richard Dawson introduced Crane (a photography enthusiast) to John Henry Carpenter, who worked with the video department at Sony Electronics and had access to early video tape recorders. In later years, Carpenter photographed some of Crane's sexual escapades with various women.

In 1978 Crane was appearing in Scottsdale in his Beginner's Luck production at the Windmill Dinner Theatre. On the night of June 28, 1978, Crane is alleged to have called Carpenter to tell him that their friendship was over. The following day, Crane was discovered bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found (but was believed to be a camera tripod) at the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona. Robert Graysmith's book The Murder of Bob Crane states that investigators found semen on Crane's dead body, indicating that the murderer may have ejaculated on him after killing him.[9]

A&E's Cold Case Files account

According to an episode of A&E's Cold Case Files, police officers who arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment several times and did not seem surprised that the police were there, which raised suspicions. The car Carpenter had rented the previous day was impounded. In it, several blood smears were found that matched Crane's blood type. DNA testing, which might have confirmed whether it was Crane's blood or not, did not exist at that time. Due to insufficient evidence, Maricopa County Attorney Charles F. Hyder declined to file charges.

Murder case reopened

The case was reopened in 1990, 12 years after the murder. A 1978 attempt to test the blood found in the car that Carpenter had rented resulted in a match to Bob Crane's blood type, but it failed to produce any additional results. DNA testing in 1990 could not be completed due to an insufficient remaining sample. The detectives in charge, Barry Vassall and Jim Raines, instead hoped that additional witnesses and a picture of a possible piece of brain tissue found in the rental car[10] (which had been lost since the original investigation) would incriminate Carpenter. He was arrested and held for trial after a preliminary hearing before a Superior Court Judge finding that evidence presented justified a trial by jury.

During Carpenter's 1994 trial, defense attorneys attacked the prosecution case as circumstantial and inconclusive. They disputed the claim that the rediscovered photo showed brain tissue, and they noted that authorities did not have the tissue itself. The defense pointed out that Crane had been videotaped and photographed in compromising sexual positions with numerous women, implying that a jealous person or someone fearing blackmail might have been the killer.

Carpenter was found not guilty. He maintained his innocence until his death on September 4, 1998, and the murder remains officially unsolved. However, authorities continue to believe that he was the killer, and no other serious suspect has ever been mentioned in the case.

In July 1978, Bob Crane was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California. More than 20 years later, Crane's family had the actor's remains exhumed and transported about 25 miles southeast, to another cemetery, Westwood Village Memorial Park, located in Westwood.

Biographical film Auto Focus (2002)

Crane's life and murder were the subject of the 2002 film Auto Focus, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear as Crane. The film, based on Graysmith's book Auto Focus: The Murder of Bob Crane, portrays Crane as a happily married, church-going family man and popular L.A. disc jockey who suddenly becomes a Hollywood celebrity, and subsequently declines into sex addiction.

Filmography

Television

Award nominations

Emmy Award

  • Nominated: Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series, Hogan's Heroes (1966)
  • Nominated: Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series, Hogan's Heroes (1967)

See also

References

  1. ^ Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Friday, February 13, 1970, p. 1, "Glittering Stars to Appear on Telethon," [1]; A&E "Bob Crane Biography" [2];"TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79.; Stamford High School; Stamford Historical Society, Stamford, CT.
  2. ^ Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Friday, February 13, 1970, p. 1, "Glittering Stars to Appear on Telethon," [3]; A&E "Bob Crane Biography" [4];"TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79.; Stamford High School; Stamford Historical Society, Stamford, CT.
  3. ^ Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Friday, February 13, 1970, p. 1, "Glittering Stars to Appear on Telethon," [5]; A&E "Bob Crane Biography" [6]; "TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79; Stamford High School, Class of 1946 Alumni.
  4. ^ Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Friday, February 13, 1970, p. 1, "Glittering Stars to Appear on Telethon," [7]; A&E "Bob Crane Biography" [8]; "TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79; TV Star Parade, January 1966, "The Unlikeliest Hero of Them All," pp. 8, 70-71; Stamford High School, Stamford, CT.
  5. ^ "TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79; Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra, formerly Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, Bridgeport, CT; Stamford High School, Class of 1946 Alumni.
  6. ^ Newark Advocate, July 24, 1965, "Crane Gambles $150,000," p. 7; Stamford National Guard records, Stamford, CT.
  7. ^ Altamont Enterprise and Albany County Post, Friday, February 13, 1970, p. 1, "Glittering Stars to Appear on Telethon," [9]; A&E "Bob Crane Biography" [10]; "TV Radio Mirror," October 1967, pp. 33, 76-79; TV Star Parade, January 1966, "The Unlikeliest Hero of Them All," pp. 8, 70-71.
  8. ^ Noe, Denise: [11] TruTV Crime Library, The Bob Crane Case.
  9. ^ (p. 81)
  10. ^ "How did Bob Crane die, anyway?" from The Straight Dope.
  • The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith, published by Crown Publishers, New York, NY, 1993
  • "The Bob Crane Story: Everything but a Hero," by A.O. Scott, New York Times, October 4, 2002

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