| Les Crane | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lesley Stein December 3, 1933 Long Beach, New York, USA |
| Died | July 13, 2008 (aged 74) Marin General Hospital Greenbrae, California, USA |
| Alma mater | Tulane University |
| Spouse | Tina Louise (for five years) Ginger Crane (fifth wife, and widow after 20 years) |
| Children | Caprice Crane |
| Notes | |
Les Crane (December 3, 1933 – July 13, 2008), born Lesley Stein, was a radio announcer and television talk show host, a pioneer in interactive broadcasting who also scored a spoken word hit with his 1971 recording of the poem Desiderata, winning a "Best Spoken Word" Grammy.
Born in Long Beach, New York (or the Bronx or San Francisco, according to conflicting sources),[2] Crane graduated from Tulane University, where he was an English major. (Freedman, 1964). He spent four years in the United States Air Force, as a jet pilot and helicopter flight instructor.
Contents |
He began his radio career in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio and later worked at WPEN in Philadelphia. In 1961, he became a popular and controversial host for the radio powerhouse KGO (AM) in San Francisco. With KGO's strong evening signal reaching as far north as Seattle, Washington, he attracted a regional audience far outside the San Francisco area. A pioneer in the development of the radio talk show, Crane delighted and irritated callers and listeners with his forthright style and unwillingness to suffer fools quietly, often hanging up on callers in contravention of the polite ethos of the times.
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.[3] Crane's style was rapid-fire and contentious, arguing with Banducci or Corey about politics or how the club was run. The call-in number, EXbrook 7-2860, was frequently repeated on air, along with the fact that Crane was only 27 years old.
Les Crane and John Barrett, the general manager of KRLA [radio station], were the original people "responsible for creating the Top 40 (list of the most requested pop songs)," said Casey Kasem in a 1990 interview.[4]
In late August 1963, Crane moved to New York City to host a 1:00 a.m. talk show on WABC-TV, the American Broadcasting Company 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. The program debuted nationwide with a trial run (telecast nightly for two weeks) in August 1964 starting at 11:15 p.m. on the ABC schedule and titled The Les Crane Show. It was the first network program to compete with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. ABC used kinescopes of two episodes from that month to pitch the show to affiliates that hadn't yet signed up to carry the series. One featured the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald debating Oswald's guilt with 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.[5] More affiliates signed up for a November relaunch of The Les Crane Show, and Look (American magazine) ran a prominent feature story with captioned still photographs from the August episodes.[5] One image shows Shelley Winters debating a controversial issue with Jackie Robinson.[5] While some critics found the late-night series innovative, it never gained much of an audience. In late June 1965, following a three-month hibernation, it was retitled ABC's Nightlife with network executives having removed most of the controversy and emphasizing light entertainment. Producer Nick Vanoff was another interested party who started forbidding guests from broaching controversial topics.[6] After the summer 1965 run, they relocated the show from New York to Los Angeles. The Paley Center for Media has available for viewing the first 15 minutes of one of the last episodes before ABC finally cancelled ABC's Nightlife in November 1965. Crane can be seen and heard delivering his monologue, joking about words that could be censored and bantering with his sidekick Nipsey Russell.
The two kinescopes that ABC used to pitch The Les Crane Show to its affiliates in 1964 constitute the only surviving video and audio of Crane's controversial show. An archive of source material on Malcolm X has audio only of the civil rights leader's December 1964 appearance with Crane. Audio only of Bob Dylan talking to Crane in February 1965 has circulated and been transcribed.[7] The National Archives has a transcript of the Oswald/Belli episode in its documents related to the JFK assassination that were declassified and released publicly in 1993 and 1994. Most Les Crane Show episodes pictured in the Look feature story, such as the one with Winters and Robinson, were completely destroyed, and what the participants said is not known.
Les Crane's confrontational interview technique, along with a "shotgun" microphone he aimed at audiences, earned him the name "the bad boy of late-night television."[8] In truth, critical opinion was divided. Some critics, like The New York Times' media critic Paul Gardner, thought he was an incisive interviewer who asked tough questions without being insulting.[8] One of the critics who did not like his show also 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." (Laurent, 1964) The one thing nearly every critic agreed with was that Crane was very photogenic—or as one critic described him, he was "a tall, handsome and personable lad..." (Smith, 1964) In fact, expectations for Crane had been quite high, but like many others, Crane would not be able to make a dent in Carson's ratings, and his new show lasted just 14 weeks before ABC executives transformed it into the more show-business-oriented ABC's Nightlife. Although his ratings proved disappointing, Crane was able to get some outstanding guests. Bob Dylan, who rarely appeared on American television, was one of them. Along with such offbeat subjects as the voice of radio's The Shadow, Bret Morrison, Crane also interviewed (in addition to the aforementioned Malcolm X) leading figures such as Richard Burton, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Wallace and Robert F. Kennedy.
Because of his good looks, it was not surprising that he tried his hand at acting, but his acting career was brief, with an appearance in the film An American Dream (1966), based on the Norman Mailer novel, and a few guest roles on television shows. Folksinger Phil Ochs mentioned him in the lyrics of his satirical 1966 song "Love Me, I'm a Liberal."[9] Some sources say that Crane gave the rock group The Mamas & the Papas their name, but this is disputed in other sources, which say John Phillips came up with the name. (see Bronson, 2003)
Crane was one of the first interviewers to have an openly gay person, Randy Wicker, on his television show, in January 1964.[10] But when Crane tried to invite members of a lesbian advocacy group, the Daughters of Bilitis to be guests on his show in June 1964, WABC ordered him to cancel the show, and he did. ("Homosexual Women", 1964) Crane was also known as an advocate for civil rights, and was praised by the black press for his respectful interviews with such black newsmakers as Muhammad Ali. (Young, 1968)
After Crane's final television appearance in the 1970s, he refused to discuss his television career and did not respond to queries about his copies of the two surviving kinescopes from 1964.
In 1968, he was back on the West Coast, hosting a 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." ("Communicasters," 1968). But he was still doing interviews with major newsmakers and discussing topics like civil disobedience, the hippies and the rising popularity of meditation. (Sweeney, 1968) He also did some local TV talk. Crane left KLAC when the station switched to a country music format.
In late 1971, the 45rpm recording of Les Crane's reading of Desiderata reached #8 on the Billboard charts. It had a great influence on mainstream society and became a counterculture anthem of sorts, and in particular introducing many to the culture of prose poetry and spoken word recording. The recording was considered inspirational and positive during a somewhat negative time. It won him a Grammy.[11]
Though Crane thought the poem was in the public domain when it was recorded, the rights in fact belonged to the family of author Max Ehrmann, and royalties were distributed accordingly.
A parody of Desiderata by National Lampoon on their comedy album, Radio Dinner (1972) went on to fame via the Dr. Demento and Howard Stern radio shows. Called Deteriorata and voiced by Norman Rose, the parody declared to listeners: "You are a fluke of the universe. You have no right to be here. And whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back". Melissa Manchester, then a little-known session singer, performed the gospel-tinged background vocals.
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."[2] He admitted to being more fond of the National Lampoon satire.
In the 1980s, Crane transitioned to the software industry and became chairman of The Software Toolworks, creators of the three-dimensional color chess series, Chessmaster and the best-selling educational series, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Toolworks was also responsible for such classics as The Original Adventure and the PC version of Pong. The Software Toolworks was sold and renamed Mindscape in the early 1990s.
Crane's personal life included five marriages. His third wife (some sources say it was his fourth) was Gilligan's Island actress Tina Louise, whom he married in 1966 and divorced in 1974.[12] They had one daughter, Caprice Crane (b. 1974), who became an author, screenwriter and television producer.
Crane died on July 13, 2008, in Greenbrae, California, north of San Francisco.[2] He had been living in Belvedere, California with his wife, Ginger, at the time of his death.