Remembering Bob Crane

[Thomps2525]

LARadio.com's Don Barrett will not be doing a column on May 30. Because the date marks the 50th anniversary of a special Bob Crane broadcast, I am posting my Rewind feature here on the RadioDiscussions site. I'd love to hear from anyone who worked with Crane at KNX or KMPC.

LARadio Rewind: May 30, 1964. Bob Crane replays portions of many of his 3,000 celebrity interviews during a four-hour 8th-anniversary show on KNX. It is Crane's final Saturday broadcast. He will be on KNX for one more year. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1928, Crane worked in radio in New York and Connecticut before coming to Los Angeles, where he began hosting mornings on KNX in 1956. He also appeared in several tv programs, then co-starred on two seasons of The Donna Reed Show before being tapped to star as Colonel Robert Hogan in Hogan's Heroes, a 1965-71 CBS sitcom about a German POW camp. Crane then briefly worked at KMPC and continued to act on television and in dinner theatre before being bludgeoned to death in 1978. John Henry Carpenter, a longtime friend, was charged with the murder but never convicted. Crane's 8th anniversary show can be heard at http://www.paleycenter.org/

 

[Thomps2525]

Here is a short clip of Bob Crane and John Banner (Sgt. Schultz---"I see nothing!") guesting on a January 1967 episode of The Red Skelton Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shlA6f77ywA

 

[LKellerIII]

Bob Crane's show on KNX was the soundtrack of my morning, getting ready for school. I would have preferred Emperor Hudson on KRLA, but my mother loved Crane. As I remember, his humor was rather erudite and adult - not in a "Rated R" sense. But it was certainly not the low brow humor of most morning radio shows today, and even many of that time.

 

[Thomps2525]

In 1978, Bob Crane was bludgeoned to death in his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona. John Henry Carpenter was the prime suspect. Even though blood with Crane's DNA was found in Carpenter's car, no charges were filed. It wasn't until 1992 that Carpenter was charged with Crane's murder but he was found "not guilty" and he continued to insist he was innocent. He died in 1998. Today on KFI, Bill Carroll interviewed Crane's eldest son, Robert, who has co-authored a new book about Crane's death. Crane: Sex, Celebrity, & My Father's Unsolved Murder.

http://www.amazon.com/Crane-Celebri...UTF8&qid=1430342394&sr=1-1&keywords=bob+crane

 

[michael hagerty]

Bob Crane's show on KNX was the soundtrack of my morning, getting ready for school. I would have preferred Emperor Hudson on KRLA, but my mother loved Crane. As I remember, his humor was rather erudite and adult - not in a "Rated R" sense. But it was certainly not the low brow humor of most morning radio shows today, and even many of that time.

Crane and Dick Whittinghill (on KMPC) both engaged in double-entendres, but Crane was infinitely smoother than Whittinghill. Whit wanted you to know it was a dirty joke and you were supposed to laugh at the punch line. Crane just slid them past you and if you were smart enough to catch it, you were enjoying the show more.

Crane's last show was in August of 1965. It would have been interesting to see how he stood up over time against Robert W. Morgan, who ended up attracting a fairly healthy adult audience by the late 60s and ended up doing what KMPC had wanted Crane to do...replacing Whittinghill. I'm betting that if you'd had Crane on KNX, Morgan on KHJ and (after 1968) Lohman and Barkley on KFI, Whittinghill might have run out of steam a bit earlier and KMPC might have made its move much sooner than 1979.

 

[LKellerIII]

Crane and Dick Whittinghill (on KMPC) both engaged in double-entendres, but Crane was infinitely smoother than Whittinghill. Whit wanted you to know it was a dirty joke and you were supposed to laugh at the punch line. Crane just slid them past you and if you were smart enough to catch it, you were enjoying the show more.

Crane's last show was in August of 1965. It would have been interesting to see how he stood up over time against Robert W. Morgan, who ended up attracting a fairly healthy adult audience by the late 60s and ended up doing what KMPC had wanted Crane to do...replacing Whittinghill. I'm betting that if you'd had Crane on KNX, Morgan on KHJ and (after 1968) Lohman and Barkley on KFI, Whittinghill might have run out of steam a bit earlier and KMPC might have made its move much sooner than 1979.

IIRC - KNX changed formats to NewsRadio in 1968, shortly after KFWB, though unlike KFWB, they still carried a lot of non-news programming from the CBS network, and local shows like Mike Roy's cooking show. Whether they would have kept Crane's show is doubtful - morning drive is a big time for news, and an odd time to go off-format.

In San Francisco, KCBS went all news about the same time. Their morning drive guy - Dave McElhatton - stayed, but he didn't continue with the old format, he became morning news anchor. It's hard to imagine Crane doing that, Hogan's Heroes aside. Regarding those earlier posts referencing Van Amburg - McElhatton worked his news career at KCBS into a TV anchor gig at KPIX in the late 70s, and brought his popularity along with him - providing the first hit to KGO-TVs news ratings in about a decade.

 

[michael hagerty]

IIRC - KNX changed formats to NewsRadio in 1968, shortly after KFWB, though unlike KFWB, they still carried a lot of non-news programming from the CBS network, and local shows like Mike Roy's cooking show. Whether they would have kept Crane's show is doubtful - morning drive is a big time for news, and an odd time to go off-format.

In San Francisco, KCBS went all news about the same time. Their morning drive guy - Dave McElhatton - stayed, but he didn't continue with the old format, he became morning news anchor. It's hard to imagine Crane doing that, Hogan's Heroes aside. Regarding those earlier posts referencing Van Amburg - McElhatton worked his news career at KCBS into a TV anchor gig at KPIX in the late 70s, and brought his popularity along with him - providing the first hit to KGO-TVs news ratings in about a decade.

Crane's numbers were so strong, KNX might not have gone all-news had he stayed. If they did, I agree he wouldn't have been there, but after 12 years of beating Whit, KMPC probably would have grabbed him. KMPC started hiring other morning men beginning in 1962 with Gary Owens, each of them (Gary, Geoff Edwards, Jim Lange, Wink Martindale, Clark Race and Robert W. Morgan) viewed as a likely successor to Whit. In fact, after 8 years' away, and with Whit's numbers in better shape, KMPC offered Crane $300,000 to do mornings. He turned them down and Whit lasted six more years.

 

[LKellerIII]

Crane's numbers were so strong, KNX might not have gone all-news had he stayed. If they did, I agree he wouldn't have been there, but after 12 years of beating Whit, KMPC probably would have grabbed him. KMPC started hiring other morning men beginning in 1962 with Gary Owens, each of them (Gary, Geoff Edwards, Jim Lange, Wink Martindale, Clark Race and Robert W. Morgan) viewed as a likely successor to Whit. In fact, after 8 years' away, and with Whit's numbers in better shape, KMPC offered Crane $300,000 to do mornings. He turned them down and Whit lasted six more years.

Interesting. Auto Focus - a flawed film, for sure - portrayed Crane as not well-off financially - doing dinner theatre in small cities, etc. But if he could afford to turn down $300K in 1973 for morning drive on KMPC (2 years post-Hogan), he can't have been too strapped for money.

 

[michael hagerty]

Interesting. Auto Focus - a flawed film, for sure - portrayed Crane as not well-off financially - doing dinner theatre in small cities, etc. But if he could afford to turn down $300K in 1973 for morning drive on KMPC (2 years post-Hogan), he can't have been too strapped for money.

At the time, Crane believed he'd have another hit, either in movies or TV. He had a starring role in a feature film at Disney "SuperDad", that he had hopes for. When that bombed, he got his own series from the (then) could do no wrong MTM (Mary Tyler Moore) Productions...The Bob Crane Show. But it was cancelled in 13 weeks. The roles got smaller and fewer from there and the last couple of years was dinner theater...but everything I've read indicated that Crane saw that as a temporary thing...something that would lead either to Broadway or back to TV or movies.

At his core, Crane considered himself an actor. There's a telling moment in the Reelradio exhibit where he's doing improv on his old KNX show with Johnathan Winters. Winters plays a movie producer and Crane an aspiring actor. Winters gives him a brutal runaround, then says "how about radio?" Crane says "I'm trying to get out of that" ....then catches himself and half-heartedly says "not get out of it, because the pay is good..." but goes on that he really wants to be in the movies. He just really didn't want to be in radio, and KMPC's offer, while lucrative, would have been a step backwards.

I hadn't heard his fill-in work for Whittinghill from 1972-73 on KMPC until a few years ago. What amazed me is how old-fashioned it seemed compared to how fresh and innovative airchecks of him at KNX from 1956-65 still seemed. Crane was phoning it in at KMPC, recycling stuff that he'd recorded (including celebrity interviews) a decade or more before for the KNX show...and playing music mostly from that era (mornings at KMPC could only accomodate six songs per hour anyway).

Given that KMPC was beginning its transition to more contemporary music, it's surprising on one level that they'd offer that much money to Crane based on such an old-school approach. But, again...they'd really been looking for a replacement for Whit for 10 years....and he was 60 in 1973. They were getting antsy and had a shot at getting the guy who knocked Whit out of the #1 slot in the first place.

My own little fantasy thing: KMPC should have grabbed Lohman and Barkley when they left KFWB in early 1968. When Geoff Edwards left KFI for KMPC a few weeks later, that would have created a hole for Whittinghill, who would have done well there and given them an anchor for their older-skewing approach. L&B might have kept KMPC in the format until their break-up in the mid 80s.

For Whit and KFI, it could have gone either way. If they'd stuck to their guns and skewed older (with Whit in mornings and Chuck Cecil in afternoons), they could have stopped some of the 50+ defection to FM beautiful music stations in the 70s (and the demo was still salable in that decade). Whit might have been able to ride it out for many years, if KFI fully embraced the audience and instead of trying to modernize, evolved into a major market "Music of Your Life"-style standards format (which worked at KPRZ in 1981 and at KMPC from 1983 until the very late 80s). Or Cox could have blown it up for Top 40 anyway, and Whit would have been on the street in 1977.