Crane (19 page)

Second Start
was the story of forty-year-old Bob Wilcox quitting his unfulfilling job in the financial world and going back to his true calling, medical school. The story line had the stagnant feel of a hybrid version of
The Donna Reed Show
and
Superdad. Hogan’s Heroes
looked like
M*A*S*H
compared to that drivel. Where was Ed Feldman? Where was Gene Reynolds? Where was
Mary Tyler Moore Show
cocreator James L. Brooks? NBC hated the pilot but liked working with MTM, liked the premise, and liked my dad, in that order. So Jackie Cooper went kaput. The title went kaput. A one-camera shoot went kaput. After a year of (Grant) Tinker-ing (CEO of MTM, husband of MTM),
The Bob Crane Show
became a three-camera comedy series, filmed in front of a studio audience. It made its network debut in March 1975, facing off against
The Waltons.
Do you remember John-Boy? Do you remember Ma and Pa Walton? Goodnight, Bob Wilcox. Goodnight, wife Ellie and daughter Pam. Goodnight, medical school administrator Lyle Ingersoll and Wilcox’s goofy buddies Marvin and Jerry. Goodnight, all.

Hogan’s Heroes
was not a hit because of the talents of any one person. There were scores of actors, writers, camera crew people, set designers, makeup and hair artists, editors, costumers, grips, and special effects artists who all worked together to create a first-class show. The viewers saw the results of the hours of work and years of experience. They didn’t see the crew behind, below, and sometimes above the camera. It was a pure
collaborative labor, not of one or two people but of eighty. Collaborative heads are always better than one, but since the demise of
Hogan’s,
my dad could never trust anyone again. As he got farther and farther away from the sphere of a television or film set, doing his play in a dinner theater in a mall in Paramus, New Jersey, he relied less and less on others. He was in charge of his set, his script, his performance. He was an actor-director trying to survive, which was fine to pay the bills, but in terms of living his life he made all the wrong choices. My dad knew how to sell only one product: Bob Crane. But he never learned or understood the fine line between selling and marketing. He had no trouble selling the quick wit, the charm, the laugh. His problem was he didn’t know how to make the suits want to buy the product.

My dad’s market had shrunk to cocktail waitresses in places like Scottsdale. His new audience, which was oblivious to the same old stool pigeons with the same old lame pickup lines, perked up when Colonel Hogan entered the room. He created a new small buzz in the space. Even though
Hogan’s
had been off the network for four years, the personage of Colonel Robert E. Hogan, grayer, fuller around the middle, a step slower, had arrived, and he could still enlist volunteers for active duty.

While on the road performing his play, my dad began offering video services to cast members fascinated by the new technology. Some of them borrowed the camera and video deck and produced their own cinema verité. Many were enthralled with the instant results of using videotape in the same way we were once fascinated by tearing off the Polaroid and waving it in the air and watching while the image developed. There was an almost childlike preoccupation and obsession with playing back the results. My dad as the video pusher also got to watch. It was the technological advances that he was showing off when he would occasionally share with me footage of nude actresses or waitresses self-consciously adjusting themselves in front of the video camera, not the images themselves. The overwhelming power of the new technology, coupled with my dad’s naïveté, self-centered tunnel vision, and desire for instant gratification, took precedence in his mind over how friends and coworkers might react to the bold images. This was All-American Colonel Hogan sharing a family photo album with his costar or director or producer or publicist or agent. Or a family album if your relations happen to be Gypsy Rose Lee, Linda Lovelace, Heidi Fleiss, and the Mayflower Madam.

My dad had no governor in his brain. When he was on the radio the
thought—the gag—fired through his brain’s synapses and was vocalized into a microphone and sent out through a transmitter on Mount Wilson into the car radio or the transistor radio in the kitchen nook. Except in the case of the radio waves his thoughts and word pictures hadn’t been X-rated. He believed that his Polaroids, his black-and-white stills, his half-inch reel-to-reel and three-quarter-inch cassette videotapes were just as cute and funny as his gags on the air. He felt that, because he was the presenter, the viewer would just go with the flow.

His
Beginner’s Luck
cast was a traveling troupe, always on the road to El Paso or Columbus. The cast members became their own community. Things got shared. Some people shared their bodies; others shared drugs and alcohol. My dad shared his pornography captured by means of the new hot technology. He was the first kid on his block to have a Sony videotape deck and camera. He was the enthusiastic one saying, “Hey, look at this!” He simply didn’t consider that some people wouldn’t want to see his “this.” Nowadays, we share our new smart phones with our friends—“Wow, it takes photographs, downloads
Lawrence of Arabia,
makes cappuccino.” In the ’70s, portable video was the new toy, and my dad was more excited about the act of photographing sexy stuff than he was about the sexy stuff itself. He was the Catholic altar boy slugging back the Communion wine and getting a buzz, but it wasn’t the blood of Christ getting him high; it was a newfound interest in winemaking.

20

In 1976, I was perusing an issue of
Oui
magazine, which was still part of Playboy and based in Chicago. I found it refreshing in design, international interviewees, out-of-the-mainstream writers, and foreign models, so I picked out a name from the magazine’s masthead for a full-frontal assault. John Rezek, senior editor, had an important-sounding name but somehow seemed approachable to me. Using my finely honed cold-calling skills I dialed the 312 area code and number.

“Playboy Enterprises,” said the perky voice at 919 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

I envisioned a blonde coed with a bunny dip figure. “John Reezik, please,” I said, guessing at the pronunciation.

“It’s Rez-ek. John Rezek,” the future diplomat and centerfold gently corrected. “Just a moment, please.”

“John Rezek’s office,” snapped a new, no-nonsense voice.

“Hi, is Mr. Rezek available?” I went for a familiar but confident tack. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Robert Crane from Los Angeles.”

There was a long pause as the secretary ran my name through her mental Rolodex. “He’s in a meeting,” she said in a voice that indicated Mr. Rezek would be in a meeting every time I called.

Well, I’d been put off by more seasoned pros than her. She couldn’t hold a candle to the dowager countess of USC’s gift store, Helen Trower, who ultimately stocked Trojans license plate frames, having been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and tenacity of Chris Fryer and yours truly. I immediately wrote John Rezek a letter, enclosing an interview I had conducted with my dad shortly after
The Bob Crane Show
went off the air in
an attempt to get him some much-needed publicity. The Q&A was titled “Interview with Bob Crane” by David Sloan. I figured a father and son conversation wouldn’t attract any interest, so I used my middle name and my stepdad’s last name.

As luck would have it, Rezek’s father was a huge
Hogan’s Heroes
fan, and the piece caught his eye. Now, my dad was nowhere near hip enough to be a
Oui
magazine interview subject, but the interview was a good calling card for me. When John Rezek and I talked on the phone shortly afterward I immediately came out of the footlocker about my subterfuge and revealed the fact that I was Colonel Hogan’s son. Thus began a series of conversations in which the young, West Coast, doesn’t-take-no-for-an-answer-kid pitched names to the erudite, oenophilic, quick-thinking, big-city, well-traveled magazine editor. I pitched comedians. I pitched athletes. I pitched actors. After half a dozen phone calls and several dozen names, finally one name caught the attention of the bright, pop-culture-observant Rezek. It was the on-the-rise, outspoken Roger Corman alumnus Bruce Dern. Rezek said, “Go.”

Since Fryer and I had already interviewed Dern for our book on Nicholson, we joined forces again. Dern was in town filming a Michael Winner loser called
Won Ton Ton, the Dog who Saved Hollywood
at the Harold Lloyd estate in Beverly Hills. Fryer and I visited the set and pitched the idea to Dern. Bruce liked us and trusted us with his words. He also liked the idea of appearing in a well-circulated Hugh Hefner publication. Chris and I discussed possible questions for Dern with Rezek and soon afterward conducted our “Conversation with Bruce Dern.” We transcribed and edited the chat, and turned it in to Rezek. Both he and Dern were pleased with the result. In reading the interview one could “hear” Bruce’s voice. His words were candid, sometimes wildly outrageous, and very often hilarious. Chris and I received a check for $750. It was our first big-time magazine piece and the beginning of my long association with John Rezek.

The suits at Playboy Enterprises Incorporated in Chicago, which had taken on the French import, soon recognized that
Playboy
’s ooh-la-la sibling didn’t quite fit in with the mahogany décor at 919 North Michigan Avenue. Hugh Hefner and his board decided that
Oui
reflected a Los Angeles sensibility and moved operations to the Playboy building on Sunset Boulevard. The official press release stated something about Hefner wanting each magazine to retain its unique role in men’s magazines. There was no going-away party.

The new West Coast
Oui
occupied spacious, sun-drenched offices in the heart of the Sunset Strip and featured a freewheeling roster of editors, including Jan Golab, Stewart Weiner, Richard Cramer, Sharon O’Hara,
and Toy Gibson. The building also housed the studios where Playboy Playmates were photographed, so I always planned on taking half a dozen elevator rides during a visit in hopes of sharing a few floors with Miss October. There was a lofty, sophisticated attitude about the models and employees of Playboy that trumped the louche, counterculture look of
Oui.
The editorial offices resembled a dean’s office full of occupying students. Hefner made it clear that
Playboy
magazine was and always would be number one in his heart. The
Oui
staff relished its position as the black sheep of the family.

I conducted interviews with Dern, Karen Black, Fred Willard, and the Temptations (with Dave Diamond), contributed to a “How I Learned about Sex” survey by the children of celebrities, and wrote a rock ’n’ roll bubble gum–blowing contest fluff piece featuring Joan Jett, Alice Cooper, and Debbie Harry. Later I was also given an assignment by Golab that resulted in a wee hours one-draft ramble about my dad’s death. With vivid memories of enjoying my dad’s stack of
Playboys
in the back room, I thought I was as close as I would ever be to the big bunny.

21

On the afternoon of June 29, 1978, at approximately 2:00, after my dad’s
Beginner’s Luck
costar Victoria Berry ran screaming from unit 132A, the Windmill Dinner Theatre’s “star apartment” at the Winfield Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Scottsdale Police Department was called. Investigators entered the dark dwelling and in one of the two small bedrooms, atop a queen-size bed, found a body lying on its right side, right arm straight out, perpendicular to the body, left arm bent, left hand tucked under the chin. The body was clad in boxer shorts and wore a watch on the left wrist. There was an electrical cord fastened tightly around the neck. A pillow stood almost vertically, not flat, at the top of the head. An opened duffel bag sat on top of the bed near the feet of the body.