Les Crane

Les Crane (born Lesley Stein; December 3, 1933 – July 13, 2008) was an American radio announcer, television host, and actor. A pioneer in interactive broadcasting, he is also known for his 1971 spoken-word recording of the poem ''Desiderata''; he won a "Best Spoken Word" Grammy for it the following year. Crane was the first network television personality to compete head-on with host Johnny Carson after Carson became a fixture of late-night television.

Biography

Early life

Born in New York, Crane graduated from Tulane University, where he was an English major. He spent four years in the United States Air Force, as a pilot and helicopter flight instructor.

Radio

He began his radio career in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio and later worked at WPEN (now WKDN) in Philadelphia. In 1961, he became a popular and controversial host for the radio powerhouse KGO in San Francisco. With KGO's strong nighttime 50,000 watt signal reaching as far north as Vancouver, BC, and as far south as Los Angeles, he attracted a regional audience in the West. ''Variety'' described him as "the popular, confrontational and sometimes controversial host of San Francisco's KGO. Helping to pioneer talk radio, he was outspoken and outraged some callers by hanging up on them."

A late-night program airing weekdays from 11pm to 2am, ''Crane at the Hungry I'' (1962–63) found Crane interacting with owner and impresario Enrico Banducci and interviewing such talents as Barbra Streisand and Professor Irwin Corey.

Crane, along with KRLA general manager John Barrett, were the original people "responsible for creating the Top 40 (list of the most requested pop songs)," said Casey Kasem in a 1990 interview.

Television

In 1963, Crane moved to New York City to host ''Night Line,'' a 1:00 a.m. talk show on WABC-TV, the American Broadcasting Company's flagship station. The first American TV appearance of The Rolling Stones was on Crane's program in June 1964 when only New Yorkers could see it. At some point in 1963 or 1964, WABC executives changed the title from ''Night Line'' to ''The Les Crane Show''. Throughout its run as a local show, viewer phone calls were included. This was possible because of a ten-second broadcast delay that previously had been used by New York radio stations.

''The New Les Crane Show'' debuted nationwide with a trial run (telecast nightly for a week) in August 1964 starting at 11:20 p.m. in east coast cities on the ABC schedule. In other time zones, the start time varied. It originated in one of the network's television studios on Manhattan's West 66th Street. The nationwide scope of the network show made incoming phone calls from viewers impossible with the technology that existed then. Network officials decided that each episode would be videotaped in advance, not live or almost-live as Crane's local show had been. The length of the delay with videotape is unknown decades later because research was not done when first-hand sources were alive. ''The New Les Crane Show'' was the first network program to compete with ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', which originated in New York prior to 1972, also with a videotaped delay before each telecast.

ABC network officials used videotapes of two episodes from the August 1964 trial run to pitch ''The New Les Crane Show'' to affiliates that had not yet signed up to carry the program. One episode featured the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald debating Oswald's guilt with noted attorney Melvin Belli, Crane and audience members. The other featured Norman Mailer and Richard Burton. Burton encouraged Crane to recite the "gravedigger speech" from ''Hamlet'', and Crane did.Carey, B. "Television's New Bad Boy." '' Look'' November 3, 1964, pp. 111–4. Crane had learned to perform it during his time at Tulane University.

More affiliates signed up for a November relaunch of ''The New Les Crane Show'', and '' Look'' ran a prominent feature story with captioned still photographs from the August episodes. One image shows Shelley Winters debating a controversial issue with Jackie Robinson, May Craig and William F. Buckley. A video clip from this telecast, preserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, indicates that the issue had to do with presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

While some critics found Crane's late-night series innovative (indeed, two and a half years later '' The Phil Donahue Show'' followed a similar format to much greater success on a local station in Dayton, Ohio during its daytime schedule), his series never gained much of an audience.

The two videotapes that ABC used to pitch ''The New Les Crane Show'' to its affiliates in 1964 constitute most of the surviving ''video and audio'' of Crane's show. The UCLA Film & Television Archive has a digitized collection of clips from the ''Les Crane Show'' early episodes in August 1964. It was assembled using videotape editing equipment, difficult to use at the time, probably so network executives could use the collection of clips, in addition to the two entire episodes, to pitch the show to affiliates around the United States that had not yet signed up to carry the show.

An archive of source material on Malcolm X has only the audio of the civil rights leader's appearance with Crane on the night of December 28–29, 1964. Their conversation starts with Crane saying, "This interview is going to be a little difficult for me to do because I know Malcolm. We've done shows together before. He's been a guest of mine on a couple of different occasions. We've had telephone conversations of length and interest." Details of their previous encounters and phone conversations are unknown. In addition to the Malcolm X archive, a business called Archival Television Audio has this recording. It also has sound recordings of Crane's local New York television show from 1963 and 1964 that amplified phone calls from viewers, possibly including Malcolm. (ABC network employees discontinued the phone calls because the limitations of telephone technology ruled out incoming calls from viewers nationwide.)

Audio of Bob Dylan's February 17, 1965 appearance is circulated online, and transcribed. Videotape of that broadcast was erased but still photographs and a snippet in silent 8mm film survive. At least two YouTube uploads include the best possible reconstruction of the telecast.

The National Archives has a transcript of the August 1964 Oswald/Belli episode in its documents related to the JFK assassination that were declassified and released publicly in 1993 and 1994. Crane's daughter Caprice Crane has said she believes her father saved until he died a kinescope of this entire episode.

The collection culled from various episodes (preserved digitally at UCLA Film & Television Archive) includes a short clip from the episode with Shelley Winters, Jackie Robinson, May Craig and William F. Buckley. All except Craig got a lot of airtime voicing opinions of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. A transcript of this episode does not exist. The UCLA collection excludes Malcolm X, evidently because the collection has only clips from August 1964, and he appeared in December 1964.

Crane aimed a "shotgun microphone" at studio audiences to allow home viewers to see and hear non-famous people participate in controversial discussions with notable people. This plus Crane's interview technique earned him the name "the bad boy of late-night television." The profile in the ''Look'' magazine edition of November 3, 1964 called him "television's new bad boy," but critical opinion was divided. ''The New York Times media critic Paul Gardner considered him an incisive interviewer who asked tough questions without being insulting.

One critic who did not like his show found Crane's trademark shotgun microphone distracting. "Each time he points this mike into the audience, it looks as though he's about to shoot a spectator." Nearly every critic described Crane as photogenic. One described him as "a tall, handsome, and personable lad...."

In addition to Dylan, who rarely appeared on American television, Malcolm X and Richard Burton, Crane's guests on ''The New Les Crane Show'' included Martin Luther King Jr., Sam Levene, George Wallace, Robert F. Kennedy, the voice of radio's ''The Shadow'', Bret Morrison (air dates and other episode details unknown for these five guests), Ayn Rand (night of December 15–16, 1964) and Judy Collins (same night as Rand, separate segment).

Crane was unable to dent Johnny Carson's ratings, and his show lasted 14 weeks before ABC executives canceled it and then made Crane one of several hosts of the more show-business-oriented ''ABC's Nightlife''. Late-night viewers did not see him for four months, while ''ABC's Nightlife'' featured other hosts. During that period, prime-time viewers saw him as an actor in a guest-star appearance on '' Burke's Law'', also on ABC. It was filmed in Los Angeles. Crane returned to New York for the videotaping of his first ''ABC's Nightlife'' appearance, telecast on the night of June 28-29, 1965. Muhammad Ali appeared with Crane and his co-hosts that night.

With ''ABC's Nightlife'', network officials continued to use videotape to delay the telecasts. Possibly alarmed by Ali's statements on the first telecast hosted by Crane, they proceeded to remove most of the controversy and emphasized light entertainment. Producer Nick Vanoff started forbidding guests from broaching controversial topics. After the summer 1965 run ended, network executives relocated the show from New York to Los Angeles, and the fall season began there. The Paley Center for Media has available for viewing the first 15 minutes of an episode from shortly before executives finally cancelled ''ABC's Nightlife'', which happened in early November 1965. Crane can be seen and heard delivering his monologue, joking about words that could be censored (he mouthed them silently or technicians silenced them) and bantering with co-host Nipsey Russell.

Soon after the November 1965 cancellation of ''ABC's Nightlife'', Crane returned to the acting he had started with ''Burke's Law'', but his career was brief. He appeared in the unsuccessful film '' An American Dream'' (1966), which was based on the Norman Mailer novel, and made a few guest-star appearances on network television shows, including a 1966 appearance on the western series '' The Virginian''.

Folksinger Phil Ochs mentioned Crane in the lyrics of his satirical 1966 song " Love Me, I'm a Liberal".

Some sources say that Crane gave the rock group The Mamas and the Papas their name, but this is disputed in other sources, including John Phillips' 1986 memoir, which says he and Cass Elliot (both founding members of the group) came up with the name while they were watching a television broadcast about the Hells Angels. Possibly the telecast was one of the ''ABC's Nightlife'' segments that Crane filmed far away from his studio. He sometimes filmed interviews on location when guests were unsuitable for a network television studio. In a radio interview, year unknown, that Cass Elliot did after the 1968 disbanding of the group of four singers, she says the following: "We were watching this special on the Hell's Angels and one of the guys, Les Crane or somebody, asked them, uh, 'What do you call your women?' And this guy said, 'Well, some call 'em cheap but we call 'em mamas.' And it became a gag. You know, well, if the mamas would cook the dinner, the papas would go out and get the cat food. And it became the Mamas and the Papas." The last several episodes of ''ABC's Nightlife'' coincide with the time frame when Phillips, Elliot, their two fellow singers and Lou Adler had daily studio sessions in United Western Recorders in Los Angeles and needed a name for their group. Crane's interview with the Hell's Angels, if it happened as Elliot suggested, does not survive.

Les Crane was known as an advocate for civil rights, and was praised by black journalists for his respectful interviews with such black newsmakers as Martin Luther King Jr. (details unknown), Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

Crane was one of the first interviewers to have an openly gay guest, Randy Wicker, on his television show. This occurred late on the night of January 31-February 1, 1964, when Crane's show that was titled ''Night Line'' aired locally on WABC Channel 7 in New York City. Archival Television Audio has 38 minutes of the sound of this telecast.Archival Television Audio catalog summaries of several Les Crane telecasts including the one with Randy Wicker
/ref> Viewer phone calls included one from a woman who told Wicker and other men who appeared on-camera with him that she had a male relative whom she knew was a homosexual. Several months later, members of a lesbian advocacy group, the Daughters of Bilitis, tried to appear on Crane's show but were less fortunate than the groundbreaking men, as the ''New York Times'' reported.

A panel discussion of lesbianism that was to have been presented Friday night une 19, 1964on the Les Crane television show on WABC-TV was ordered canceled by the station's legal department. A spokesman for the show said that no reason had been given.

After Les Crane's final television appearance in the early 1970s, he refused to discuss his television career and did not respond to queries about any kinescope films of his late-night ABC show from 1964 that he possibly owned.

His daughter Caprice Crane has said he had two August 1964 episodes in their entirety: the one with Richard Burton that is represented by a large still photograph of Burton and Crane in Crane's ''Look'' magazine profile (Norman Mailer supposedly appears on the episode, too), and the one in which Melvin Belli debates Lee Oswald's guilt with Lee's mother Marguerite.

When Caprice was informed about the reel of clips from a handful of episodes that can be viewed at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, she replied that she had never seen it and she did not know whether her father was ever aware of it.

Later career

Crane had another acting part in 1967, starring as Jack, the leader of three detectives in '' I Love a Mystery'', a pilot film for a proposed television series based on the popular radio show that had aired from 1939 to 1944. His colleagues were portrayed by Hagan Beggs and David Hartman. The series wasn't developed, and NBC didn't air the movie until 1973.

In 1968, Les Crane was hosting a radio talk show on KLAC in Los Angeles. Critics noted that in the style of the 1960s, he now dressed in a turtleneck and moccasins, sprinkling his speech with words like "groovy." However, he was still doing interviews with major newsmakers and discussing topics like civil disobedience, hippies and the rising popularity of meditation. Crane left KLAC when the station switched to a country music format.

For approximately nine months during 1968, Crane hosted a syndicated television talk show that originated from Los Angeles. Outlets for this syndicated series included WTTG Channel 5 in Washington, DC, according to multiple television schedule listings in ''The Washington Post'' and '' The Washington Star'' when it was known as the ''Evening Star''. YouTube has one entire telecast from this series, running time 48 minutes 25 seconds, with the YouTube title "The Les Crane Show August/Sept 1968." It consists of Crane and two guests, Joseph Lewis and Jack Lindsey, discussing the policies of California governor Ronald Reagan.

In late 1971, the 45rpm recording of Crane's reading of ''Desiderata'' reached No. 8 on the ''Billboard'' charts. It became what one writer called "a New Age anthem" and won him a Grammy.

Though Crane thought the poem was in the public domain when it was recorded, the rights belonged to the family of author Max Ehrmann, and royalties were distributed accordingly. When asked about the recording during an interview by the ''Los Angeles Times'' in 1987, Crane replied, "I can't listen to it now without gagging."

In the 1980s, Crane transitioned to the software industry, joining The Software Toolworks as chairman and partner. Toolworks created the three-dimensional color chess series '' Chessmaster 2000'' and the educational series '' Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing'', making Crane a multimillionaire. The company was sold and renamed Mindscape in the early 1990s.

Marriages

Crane was married five times. The 1964 ''Look'' magazine profile includes a photograph of him with his second wife Eve (née Ford). The text of the article says he was helping raise the younger two of her three children from her previous marriage that had ended in divorce. Her oldest child was at boarding school in Oregon. ''Look'' photographer Bob Sandberg captured the two younger children watching their mother and Crane play the game of Go on the lawn of their home in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Crane's third wife was ''Gilligan's Island'' cast member Tina Louise, whom he married in 1966 and divorced in 1971. Their only child together was Caprice Crane (b. 1970), who became an author, screenwriter and television producer.

Les Crane and Tina Louise can be seen as actors in a joint appearance on a 1969 segment of ''Love, American Style'' entitled "Love and the Advice-Givers."Metacritic documentation of the joint acting appearance of Les Crane and his wife Tina Louise
/ref>

Death

Crane died on July 13, 2008, in Greenbrae, California, north of San Francisco, at age 74. At the time of his death, he had been living in nearby Belvedere, California with his wife Ginger.

Notes

References

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Crane, Les
1933 births
2008 deaths
American radio DJs
Television personalities from California
Grammy Award winners
Radio personalities from New York City
Tulane University alumni
United States Air Force officers
20th-century American musicians
People from Belvedere, California
American flight instructors
Aviators from New York (state)
Military personnel from California