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Les Crane | |
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Crane on the set of his television talk show, 1964 | |
Born | Lesley Gary Stein (1933-12-03)December 3, 1933 New York City, U.S. |
Died | July 13, 2008(2008-07-13) (aged 74) Greenbrae, California, U.S. |
Alma mater | Tulane University |
Known for | Talk-show host |
Spouses | Five marriages, including: |
Children | Caprice Crane |
Les Crane (bornLesley Stein; December 3, 1933 – July 13, 2008) was an American radio announcer, television talk show host, and actor. A pioneer in interactive broadcasting, he is also known for his1971 spoken-word recording of the poemDesiderata; he won a "Best Spoken Word"Grammy for it the following year. Crane was the first network television personality to compete head-on withJohnny Carson after Carson became a fixture of late-night television.
Born in New York, Crane graduated fromTulane University, where he was an English major. He spent four years in theUnited States Air Force, as a pilot and helicopter flight instructor.[1]
He began his radio career in 1958 atKONO inSan Antonio and later worked atWPEN (now WKDN) inPhiladelphia. In 1961, he became a popular and controversial host for the radio powerhouseKGO inSan Francisco. With KGO's strong nighttime 50,000 watt signal reaching as far north asVancouver, BC, and as far south asLos Angeles, he attracted a regional audience in the West.[citation needed]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."[2]
A late-night program airing weekdays from 11pm to 2am,Crane at theHungry I (1962–63) found Crane interacting with owner and impresarioEnrico Banducci and interviewing such talents asBarbra Streisand and ProfessorIrwin Corey.[2]
Crane, along withKRLA general manager John Barrett, were the original people "responsible for creating theTop 40 (list of the most requestedpop songs)," saidCasey Kasem in a 1990 interview.[3]
In 1963, Crane moved to New York City to hostNight Line, a 1:00 a.m. talk show onWABC-TV, theAmerican Broadcasting Company's flagship station. The first American TV appearance ofThe 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 fromNight Line toThe Les Crane Show. Throughout its run as a local show, viewer phone calls were included.[4] This was possible because of a ten-second broadcast delay that previously had been used by New York radio stations.[5]
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 viewer phone calls impossible with 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 withThe 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 pitchThe New Les Crane Show to affiliates that had not yet signed up to carry the program. One episode featured the mother ofLee Harvey Oswald debating Oswald's guilt with noted attorneyMelvin Belli, Crane and audience members. The other featuredNorman Mailer andRichard Burton. Burton encouraged Crane to recite the "gravedigger speech" fromHamlet, and Crane did.[6] Crane had learned to perform it during his time at Tulane University.[6]
More affiliates signed up for a November relaunch ofThe New Les Crane Show, andLook ran a prominent feature story with captioned still photographs from the August episodes.[6] One image showsShelley Winters debating a controversial issue withJackie Robinson,May Craig andWilliam F. Buckley.[6] A video clip from this telecast, preserved at theUCLA Film & Television Archive, indicates that the issue had to do with presidential candidateBarry Goldwater.
While some critics found Crane's late-night series innovative (indeed, two and a half years laterThe Phil Donahue Show followeda similar format to much greater success on a local station inDayton, Ohio during its daytime schedule), his series never gained much of an audience.
The two videotapes that ABC used to pitchThe New Les Crane Show to its affiliates in 1964 constitute most of the survivingvideo and audio of Crane's show. The UCLA Film & Television Archive has a digitized collection of clips from theLes 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 onMalcolm 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.[7] 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.[8] (ABC network employees discontinued the phone calls because the limitations of telephone technology ruled out incoming calls from viewers nationwide.)
Audio ofBob Dylan's February 17, 1965 appearance is circulated online,[9] and transcribed.[10] 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.
TheNational Archives has a transcript of the August 1964 Oswald/Belli episode in its documents related to theJFK assassination that were declassified and released publicly in 1993 and 1994. Crane's daughterCaprice 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."[11] The profile in theLook 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.[11] 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."[12] Nearly every critic described Crane as photogenic. One described him as "a tall, handsome, and personable lad...."[13]
In addition to Dylan, who rarely appeared on American television, Malcolm X and Richard Burton, Crane's guests onThe New Les Crane Show includedMartin Luther King Jr.,Sam Levene,George Wallace,Robert F. Kennedy, the voice of radio'sThe Shadow,Bret Morrison (air dates and other episode details unknown for these five guests),Ayn Rand (night of December 15–16, 1964) andJudy 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-orientedABC's Nightlife. Late-night viewers did not see him for four months, whileABC's Nightlife featured other hosts. During that period, prime-time viewers saw him as an actor in a guest-star appearance onBurke's Law, also on ABC. It was filmed in Los Angeles. Crane returned to New York for the videotaping of his firstABC's Nightlife appearance, telecast on the night of June 28-29, 1965.Muhammad Ali appeared with Crane and his co-hosts that night.[14]
WithABC'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,[14] they proceeded to remove most of the controversy and emphasized light entertainment. Producer Nick Vanoff started forbidding guests from broaching controversial topics.[15] After the summer 1965 run ended, network executives relocated the show from New York to Los Angeles, and the fall season began there. ThePaley Center for Media has available for viewing the first 15 minutes of an episode from shortly before executives finally cancelledABC'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-hostNipsey Russell.
Soon after the November 1965 cancellation ofABC's Nightlife, Crane returned to the acting he had started withBurke's Law, but his career was brief. He appeared in the unsuccessful filmAn 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 seriesThe Virginian.
FolksingerPhil Ochs mentioned Crane in the lyrics of his satirical 1966 song "Love Me, I'm a Liberal".[16]
Some sources say that Crane gave the rock groupThe Mamas and the Papas their name, but this is disputed in other sources, includingJohn Phillips' 1986 memoir, which says he andCass Elliot (both founding members of the group) came up with the name while they were watching a television broadcast about theHells Angels. Possibly the telecast was one of theABC'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."[17] The last several episodes ofABC's Nightlife coincide with the time frame when Phillips, Elliot, their two fellow singers andLou Adler had daily studio sessions inUnited 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 asMartin Luther King Jr. (details unknown), Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
Crane was one of the first interviewers to have anopenly 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 titledNight Line aired locally on WABC Channel 7 in New York City.[18] Archival Television Audio has 38 minutes of the sound of this telecast.[19] 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.[19] Several months later, members of a lesbian advocacy group, theDaughters of Bilitis, tried to appear on Crane's show but were less fortunate than the groundbreaking men, as theNew York Times reported.[20]
A panel discussion of lesbianism that was to have been presented Friday night [June 19, 1964] on 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.[20]
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'sLook 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.
Crane had another acting part in 1967, starring as Jack, the leader of three detectives inI 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 byHagan Beggs andDavid Hartman. The series wasn't developed, andNBC didn't air the movie until 1973.
In 1968, Les Crane was hosting a radio talk show onKLAC 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."[21] However, he was still doing interviews with major newsmakers and discussing topics like civil disobedience, hippies and the rising popularity of meditation.[22] 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 includedWTTG Channel 5 in Washington, DC, according to multiple television schedule listings inThe Washington Post andThe Washington Star when it was known as theEvening 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 governorRonald Reagan.
In late 1971, the 45rpm recording of Crane's reading ofDesiderata reached No. 8 on theBillboard charts. It became what one writer called "a New Age anthem" and won him aGrammy.[23]
Though Crane thought the poem was in thepublic domain when it was recorded, the rights belonged to the family of authorMax Ehrmann, androyalties were distributed accordingly.[citation needed] When asked about therecording during an interview by theLos Angeles Times in 1987, Crane replied, "I can't listen to it now without gagging."[24]
In the 1980s, Crane transitioned to the software industry, joiningThe Software Toolworks as "chairman and one of five partners," as reported in theLos Angeles Times in 1987.[25] Toolworks created the three-dimensional color chess seriesChessmaster 2000 and the educational seriesMavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The company was also responsible for such games asThe Original Adventure and the PC version ofPong. The company was sold and renamedMindscape in the early 1990s.[1]
Crane was married five times.[24] The 1964Look magazine profile includes a photograph of him with his second wife Eve[6] (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.[6] Her oldest child was at boarding school in Oregon.[6]Look photographer Bob Sandberg captured the two younger children watching their mother and Crane play thegame of Go[6] on the lawn of their home inOyster Bay, Long Island.[6]
Crane's third wife wasGilligan's Island cast memberTina Louise, whom he married in 1966 and divorced in 1971.[24] Their only child together wasCaprice Crane (b. 1970),[26] 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 ofLove, American Style entitled "Love and the Advice-Givers."[27]
Crane died on July 13, 2008, inGreenbrae, California, north of San Francisco, at age 74.[24] At the time of his death, he had been living in nearbyBelvedere, California with his wife Ginger.[1]
NYC native and Tulane U. graduate scored a surprise Grammy for spoken word in 1971 with his reading of "Desiderata", which peaked at number eight on theBillboard charts. His restful voice intoning over a musical score became a counterculture hit (and also was parodied in 1972 byNational Lampoon)
Les Crane, the bad boy of late-night television, has reformed. The man who kept insomniacs off sleeping pills during the hours after midnight has forsaken his telephone, desk, and bedside manner.
Les Crane, who died on July 13 at age 74, became an unlikely one-hit wonder in the British and American pop charts with "Desiderata" (1971), his spoken-word version of an obscure prose poem that became a New Age anthem.... number eight in the American Billboard chart and number seven in the British Top 10 in February 1972 as the country was gripped by a coal strike.Reprinted inThe New York Sun.