1. Les Crane spent four years in the United States Air Force, as a pilot and helicopter flight instructor.
26 Facts About Les Crane
1. 2.
Les Crane began his radio career in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio and later worked at WPEN in Philadelphia.
3.
The New Les Crane Show debuted nationwide with a trial run in August 1964 starting at 11:20 pm in east coast cities on the ABC schedule.
4.
Network officials decided that each episode would be videotaped in advance, not live or almost-live as Les Crane's local show had been.
5.
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, with a videotaped delay before each telecast.
6.
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.
7.
Burton encouraged Les Crane to recite the "gravedigger speech" from Hamlet, and Les Crane did.
8.
Les Crane had learned to perform it during his time at Tulane University.
9.
Les 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.
10.
Les Crane was unable to dent Johnny Carson's ratings, and his show lasted 14 weeks before ABC executives canceled it and then made Les Crane one of several hosts of the more show-business-oriented ABC's Nightlife.
11.
Possibly alarmed by Ali's statements on the first telecast hosted by Les Crane, they proceeded to remove most of the controversy and emphasized light entertainment.
12.
Les Crane can be seen and heard delivering his monologue, joking about words that could be censored and bantering with co-host Nipsey Russell.
13.
Les Crane appeared in the unsuccessful film An American Dream, 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.
14.
Some sources say that Les 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 came up with the name while they were watching a television broadcast about the Hells Angels.
15.
Possibly the telecast was one of the ABC's Nightlife segments that Les Crane filmed far away from his studio.
16.
Les Crane sometimes filmed interviews on location when guests were unsuitable for a network television studio.
17.
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.
18.
Les Crane was one of the first interviewers to have an openly gay guest, Randy Wicker, on his television show.
19.
Les 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.
20.
Les Crane's colleagues were portrayed by Hagan Beggs and David Hartman.
21.
In 1968, Les Crane was hosting a radio talk show on KLAC in Los Angeles.
22.
Les Crane left KLAC when the station switched to a country music format.
23.
In late 1971, the 45rpm recording of Les Crane's reading of Desiderata reached No 8 on the Billboard charts.
24.
Les Crane was responsible for such games as The Original Adventure and the PC version of Pong.
25.
Les Crane was sold and renamed Mindscape in the early 1990s.
26.
Les Crane died on July 13,2008, in Greenbrae, California, north of San Francisco, at age 74.