Read Crane Online

Authors: Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer

Crane

CRANE

CRANE

SEX, CELEBRITY,
and MY FATHER’S

UNSOLVED
MURDER

ROBERT CRANE

AND CHRISTOPHER FRYER

Due to variations in the technical specifications of different electronic reading devices, some elements of this ebook may not appear as they do in the print edition.Readers are encouraged to experiment with user settings for optimum results.

Copyright © 2015 by Robert David Crane and Christopher Fryer

The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices:
The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crane, Robert David.

Crane : sex, celebrity, and my father’s unsolved murder / Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer.

  pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-6074-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper) —

ISBN 978-0-8131-6076-4 (PDF) — ISBN 978-0-8131-6075-7 (ePub)

1. Crane, Bob, 1929-1978. 2. Television actors and actresses—United States—Biography. 3. Murder—Investigation—Arizona—Scottsdale. 4. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—-Arizona—Scottsdale. 5. Crane, Robert David. 6. Crane, Bob, 1929-1978—Family. 7. Fathers and sons—United States—Biography. 8. Fame—Social aspects—California—Los Angeles. 9. Sex—Social aspects—California—Los Angeles. 10. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Social life and customs. I. Fryer, Christopher.

II. Title.

PN1992.4.C73C736 2015

791.4302'8092—dc23                                                                                                      2014043934

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of American University Presses

To Anne, Chuck, Debbie, and Karen

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

—Christopher Isherwood,
The Berlin Stories: Goodbye to Berlin

Contents

Author’s Note

  
1.  Reveille, 1978

  
2.  Oh, Pioneers, 1955–1956

  
3.  No Good-byes, 1978

  
4.  One Happy Little Family, 1956–1964

  
5.  CSI: Crime Scene Ineptitude, 1978

  
6.  Uncle Daddy, 1964–1965

  
7.  Round Up the Usual Suspects, 1978

  
8.  Zero to Ninety, 1965–1966

  
9.  Seeing Orange, 1978

10.  Living la Vita Hogan, 1967

11.  Happy Father’s Day, 1978

12.  Divorce, Tarzana Style, 1968–1969

13.  Loose Nukes, 1978

14.  Love in a Time of War, 1969–1970

15.  Don’t Make Waves, 1970–1971

16.  War Is Over, 1971–1972

17.  Beacon in the Storm, 1972

18.  Heeeere’s Jackie!!! 1972–1975

19.  The Family Photo Album, 1975

20.  Take the Bunny and Run, 1976–1977

21.  Scottsdale Redux, 1978

22.  Heeeere’s Bobby!!! 1979

23.  There Ain’t No Stinkin’ Closure! 1979–1980

24.  For Members Only, 1981–1982

25.  Kari, 1982–1985

26.  Bobby Ten Hats, 1986

27.  Crane in the Hutch, 1986

28.  Going to War, 1986–1988

29.  Full-Fledged Chongo, 1989

30.  Groundhog Day, Scottsdale, 1990

31.  Bob’s Candy Shoppe, 1990

32.  John, John, Jack, and Johnny, 1990–1991

33.  Murder Cases Never Close, 1991

34.  Planes, Cars, and Roller Coasters, 1991

35.  Just a Speck, 1992

36.  Go and Stop, 1992

37.  The Beat Goes On, 1992–1993

38.  Hostage No More, 1993

39.  Adios, Amigo, 1993–1994

40.  Judgment at Scottsdale, 1994

41.  Ninety to Zero, 1994–1995

42.  Yet Another Cold Call, 1996

43.  Same Shit, Different Century, 2000–2001

44.  Out of Focus, 2001–2002

45.  Nature Morte, 2003–2007

46.  Taps, 2009

Acknowledgments

Appendix A. Bob Crane Interviewed by John Carpenter for an X-Rated “Swingers’” Magazine, 1969

Appendix B. Robert Crane and John Carpenter Telephone Call Transcript, 1978

Appendix C. Robert Crane’s Letter to Sony Pictures Classics Legal Department Addressing
Auto Focus
Script, 2002

Appendix D. Robert Crane’s Piece for
Auto Focus
Website, 2002

Appendix E.
HWY 111:
Bob Crane’s Ten Stupid Questions, 2003

Index

Author’s Note

This book is a work of memory, and as such there may be other people who have different recollections of these events. I have written what I remember to be true and accurate. Some names have been changed for reasons that will be obvious. Some quotes from Greg Kinnear, Paul Schrader, and Willem Dafoe regarding
Auto Focus
were taken from a variety of sources, and not necessarily from one specific evening’s conversation. They do, however, convey the essence of what was said.

Robert Crane

1

Reveille, 1978

On Thursday, June 29, 1978, I was twenty-seven years and two days old. I had just interviewed the hottest star in Hollywood for Playboy’s new Euro-hip
Oui
magazine. I was living in Westwood, California, the epicenter of movies, nightlife, and all things cool in Los Angeles. Life was almost perfect for a young man in my position—almost, because twelve hours earlier, someone had crept into the room where my dad, TV star Bob Crane, was sleeping and bashed in his head with a blunt object. I was about to find that out.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon. I was home alone at the apartment my dad and I shared. Westwood was an eclectic mix of neighborhoods. UCLA student apartments and frat houses mixed genially with the grander estates of L.A.’s elites. In fact, Dad owned a large, handsome house that was less than a mile from the two-bedroom apartment he was sharing with me.

At the time Dad was going through very heated divorce proceedings and needed a safe-house. I guess most divorce proceedings are heated, but his marriage had become Chernobyl on the Pacific. The meltdown had begun six months earlier in December 1977 when he stepped off a United Airlines jet at LAX from Cincinnati, where he’d been directing and performing in his dinner theater workhorse
Beginner’s Luck
over the previous month. Since the cancellation of
Hogan’s Heroes
in 1971, live theater had been paying most of my dad’s bills. At the airport, he wasn’t greeted by a driver or a loving family member; a man walked up to him and asked, “Are you Bob Crane?”

“Yes,” he answered, pen ready, thinking the guy wanted an autograph.

“These are for you,” the guy said, and slapped divorce papers against his chest.

Like most boys in distress, he retreated to his mother. A widow, Rose lived in a one-bedroom apartment just down the street from mine. Dad
couldn’t go back to his own house because Patti, his second wife who was now suing him for divorce, was in residence there with her teenage daughter from her first marriage and with Scotty, my six-year-old half brother. The house is a half-timbered Tudor affair, draped on the hillside like a spider’s web, and Patti had taken up her position in its center, guarding her realm.

When my dad and Patti collided, I had been living alone in my own Westwood apartment. Dad asked me to move in with him at his new digs, and I did—going literally half a block up the street. The 1930s building had nice big windows and hardwood floors. We set up the living room as a little theater for projection TV, which was the newest craze, with those primary-color lights that broadcast the entire television spectrum. We each had a bedroom. The kitchen area was very small, which was fine because we didn’t cook. It was all TV dinners and takeout for us. The dining room was the postproduction room. The guests at our dining table were my dad’s equipment: Sony VHS and Beta video recorders, a monstrous three-quarter-inch cassette video deck, an Akai quarter-inch audiotape recorder, a Sony handheld video camera, hundreds of video and audio cassettes and vinyl records, a turntable, microphones, a Nikon F still camera, camera tripods, RCA and Sony television monitors, a metal bar for cutting video and audio tape. All the new and exciting techno-gear of 1977 and ’78 was on that table.

So at 3:00 p.m. on June 29 I was alone at the apartment writing up the interview I had just done with Chevy Chase for
Oui.
Chevy had emerged as the first star of the mold-shattering, late-night television revue
Saturday Night Live,
and he was about to become a big-time movie star.
Oui,
owned by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Enterprises, badly wanted him in the magazine, and I was the lucky guy on the assignment. I was sitting there transcribing tape—which, for the uninitiated, meant turning on a Panasonic portable cassette recorder, listening to a sentence or two, turning it off, typing the words on my Smith-Corona electric typewriter, turning the tape on again, and repeating the process over and over for an endless number of hours. It was important to me to have the interviewee’s words transcribed perfectly so there could be no mistaking the subject’s “voice.” Not exactly a glamorous life, sitting in a room by yourself rolling tape, but Chevy was making me laugh with his candid observations of his former cast mates.

Other books

Clockwork Twist : Dreamer by Emily Thompson
Lies & Lullabies by Courtney Lane
Crave by Murphy, Monica
Changeling by Delia Sherman
AJ's Salvation by Sam Destiny
The Queen Bee of Bridgeton by DuBois, Leslie
A Christmas Blessing by Sherryl Woods


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024