27 Facts About Bob Crane

Robert Edward Crane was an American actor, drummer, radio personality and disc jockey known for starring in the CBS sitcom Hogan's Heroes.

Bob Crane was a drummer from age 11, and began his entertainment career as a radio personality, beginning in Hornell, New York and later in Connecticut.

Bob Crane then moved to Los Angeles, where he hosted the number-one rated morning radio show.

The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Bob Crane received two Emmy Award nominations.

Bob Crane became frustrated with the few roles that he was being offered and began performing in dinner theater.

In 1975 he returned to television with the NBC series The Bob Crane Show, but the series received poor ratings and was cancelled after thirteen weeks.

Bob Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment while on tour in June 1978 for a dinner theater production of Beginner's Luck.

Bob Crane began playing drums at the age of 11, and by junior high was organizing local drum and bugle parades with his neighborhood friends.

Bob Crane played for the Connecticut and Norwalk Symphony Orchestras as part of their youth orchestra program.

In 1950, Bob Crane began his career in radio broadcasting at WLEA in Hornell, New York.

Bob Crane soon moved to Connecticut stations WLAD in Danbury, WBIS in Bristol and then WICC in Bridgeport, a 1,000-watt operation with a signal covering the northeastern portion of the New York metropolitan area.

In 1956, Bob Crane was hired by CBS Radio to host the morning show at its West Coast flagship KNX in Los Angeles, partly to re-energize that station's ratings and partly to halt his erosion of suburban ratings at WCBS in New York City.

In 1965, Bob Crane was offered the starring role in a CBS television sitcom set in a World War II POW camp.

The series lasted for six seasons on CBS, and Bob Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1966 and 1967.

Bob Crane divorced Terzian in 1970, just before their 21st anniversary, and married Olson on the set of the show later that year, with series co-star Richard Dawson serving as best man.

The couple's son, Robert Scott "Scotty" Bob Crane, was born in 1971, and they later adopted a daughter, Ana Marie.

In 1969, Bob Crane starred with Abby Dalton in a dinner theater production of Cactus Flower.

In 1973, Bob Crane purchased the rights to a comedy play called Beginner's Luck and began touring it, as its star and director, at the Showboat Dinner Theatre in St Petersburg, Florida; the La Mirada Civic Theatre in California; the Windmill Dinner Theatre in Scottsdale, Arizona; and other dinner theaters around the country.

In 1975, he returned to television with his own series, The Bob Crane Show on NBC, which was cancelled after fourteen episodes.

In early 1978, Bob Crane taped a travel documentary in Hawaii and recorded an appearance on the Canadian afternoon cooking show Celebrity Cooks; neither aired in the US His appearance on Celebrity Cooks was broadcast on CBC Television five times beginning in 1978, and was dramatized in the biopic film Auto Focus.

Bob Crane attracted many women due to his celebrity status, and he introduced Carpenter to them as his manager.

In June 1978, Bob Crane was living in the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale during a run of Beginner's Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre.

Bob Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never identified, though investigators believed it to be a camera tripod.

Bob Crane's funeral was held on July 5,1978 at St Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, Los Angeles.

Bob Crane was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

Scotty further testified that Bob Crane had called Carpenter the night before the murder to end their friendship.

Bob Crane meets Carpenter, played by Willem Dafoe, and learns about then-new home video technology.