![bob-crane-hogans-heroes-main](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-main.jpg?resize=940%2C529&quality=86&strip=all)
Moviestore/Shutterstock
As His Son Reveals, There Was Much More to Actor Bob Crane Than ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Murder and Scandal
Have you ever seen a New Yorker’s map of the United States? It consists of New York, New Jersey, desert and California. Strangely, it’s a tunnel vision approach that’s not far removed from the way people view the late Bob Crane, star of 1965 to 1971’s Hogan’s Heroes. As far as they’re concerned, his life has been reduced to that Classic TV sitcom from the 1960s, his unsolved 1978 murder and the scandal that followed it.
That assessment of his father is something that his journalist son, Robert Crane, has had to deal with over the past 40 years, which he attempted to do in his 2015 book (co-written with Christopher Fryer) Crane: Sex, Celebrity and My Father’s Unsolved Murder. That tome also focuses on their relationship and Robert’s own struggles with growing up in Hollywood. What’s interesting about speaking to him regarding his dad is that there’s a duality in feeling that quickly becomes evident. A recognition of the light and the dark within him.
![crane-book-cover](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/crane-book-cover.jpg?fit=400%2C600&quality=86&strip=all&resize=400%2C600)
When asked about what would surprise people about Bob Crane, without missing a beat, Robert says, “He was a big kid and just loved to have fun. Here’s an example: my dad and I created a pool league — played in the pool with a little rubber ball and a short bat — and we had a full schedule. We had the baseball teams of the day, and this was back in the fifties and sixties. We each took different teams and played in the pool. We even had our own World Series! He would also take me and my two sisters to the park, go down the slide and just have fun with us. Again, like a big kid.”
But almost within the same breath, there’s this assessment: “The other side of him is I don’t know whether or not he should have been married, even though he was married twice. My mom [Anne Terzian] was first, and then Patty Olson, who played Klink’s secretary on Hogan’s Heroes (currently airing on the MeTV network). But the thing is, fidelity was not a big word in my dad’s vocabulary. He just loved women. Part of that was ego and part of that was that he was a photographer as well, and he loved to photograph women … with their consent. No hidden cameras, no drugs.
![bob-crane-and-his-kids](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-personal-4.jpeg?fit=400%2C520&quality=86&strip=all)
“He would meet women on the road while he was doing a play or even in town,” he adds. “While he was shooting Hogan’s Heroes, plenty of beautiful women came by the set to see the cast members, so, yeah, he was in the right place at the right time. His behavior wouldn’t pass muster today, but he appreciated women, the way they looked, the way they behaved. But I want to stress that all of the photos and films that he shot was consensual with the women as far as I know.” The reason for that emphasis is to come.
Please scroll down for much more about Bob Crane.
Listen on Spotify to Closer Weekly’s Classic Film and TV podcast as we celebrate Classic TV with behind the scenes coverage, celebrity interviews, news and much more!
1 of 24
![bob-crane-playing-drums](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-drums.jpg?fit=800%2C599&quality=86&strip=all)
Anonymous/AP/Shutterstock
Little Drummer Boy
Born Robert Edward Crane July 13, 1928, in Waterbury, Connecticut, the first indication that Bob was destined for the entertainment life was the way he fell in love with playing drums. By the time he was in middle school, he was actually pulling together local drum and bugle parades with friends from the neighborhood. When he attended high school, he became a part of the orchestra and jazz and marching bands. He actually played for the Connecticut and Norwalk Symphony Orchestras as part of their youth orchestra program. Two years after graduating from Stamford High School in 1946, he joined the Connecticut Army National Guard, from which he was honorably discharged in 1950. A year before that, he married Anne Erzian, his high school sweetheart, with whom he became the father of Robert David, Deborah Anne and Karen Leslie.
2 of 24
![bob-crane-radio-1](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-radio-1.jpeg?fit=782%2C1114&quality=86&strip=all)
Courtesy Robert Crane
Bob Crane on the Air!
In 1950, Bob recognized his true calling: serving as a radio dee-jay, which he did at Hornell, New York’s WLEA; followed by Bristol, Connecticut’s WBIS and Bridgeport, Connecticut’s WICC. “His big break,” details Robert, “and the thing that got our family out to Los Angeles from Connecticut was that there was an opening on the morning show at CBS’ KNX. He jumped at that opportunity. He and my mom came out first to check things out, because no one in my family had ever been in California. We were all New York, Connecticut and New Jersey people. Once he took the job, he was on the morning show six days a week from 6 to 10 in the morning.”
3 of 24
![bob-crane-portrait-2](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-portrait-2.jpg?fit=800%2C1066&quality=86&strip=all)
Anonymous/AP/Shutterstock
Unique Thinker
Continues Robert, “He had an incredible improvisational brain. He didn’t write anything down, but he knew certain areas that he wanted to cover each morning, either based on news events or sports or something else going on. He would have guests and ended up interviewing everybody. I used to go down and watch him do the show when I was off school or during the summer or something, and I sat there wondering where he pulled this or that from. There were sound effects, quotes from people from comedy albums or whatever. And he would have four turntables, and this was back in the days of vinyl records, before digital. So he had four turntables around him, and he wore a microphone almost like a horse collar so he could stand up and move around. He had a small drum set up in the corner and would drum along with songs playing on the radio. Oh, and all of this was going on without coffee. He didn’t drink coffee. He was just running on a total love for what he was doing and hopefully making some people out there in the audience laugh and have a good time.”
4 of 24
![bob-crane-dick-van-dyke-show](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-dick-van-dyke-show.jpg?fit=800%2C608&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Turning An Eye Toward Acting
“He loved radio until his demise,” Robert comments. “But he had two acting heroes, Jack Lemmon and Gig Young. Those two guys played light comedy, but they did dramatic roles as well. So he thought, ‘I’m in Hollywood now. There’s theater, there’s TV, there’s film. I would love to take a shot at it.’ And he got a couple of breaks. Rod Serling was on his radio show and gave him a little voiceover piece for The Twilight Zone [1961 episode ‘Static’]. And then the big break for him was when Carl Reiner, who was producing The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was a number one comedy show on TV, gave him a break as a philandering husband.”
5 of 24
![bob-crane-donna-reed-show](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-donna-reed-show.jpg?fit=609%2C319&quality=86&strip=all)
Screen Gems
‘The Donna Reed Show’
From there he was cast in a recurring role on The Donna Reed Show in the role of Dr. Dave Kelsey, appearing on a total of 62 episodes between 1963 and 1965. “He was doing radio all through this,” says Robert, “so he would have to pre-tape part of his morning show, because he’d have to be on a set at 8 in the morning. Obviously it got really crazy. When he finally got the big break with Hogan’s Heroes, he was still doing his radio show as they were filming the first six to eight episodes of the first season, before it was on the air. So this is the summer right before the debut, but there was such a good vibe from the people at CBS and the sponsors that he eventually decided he couldn’t do radio and star in a TV show at the same time. It was different with Donna Reed, because he was just a supporting player, so he would work a couple of days a week. But Hogan was there every day and he couldn’t do both, so he had to leave KNX at the end of August.”
6 of 24
![bob-crane-hogans-heroes-cast](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-cast.jpg?fit=800%2C530&quality=86&strip=all)
Moviestore/Shutterstock
Oh, Those Wacky Nazis!
It seems hard to believe that the concept for Hogan’s Heroes received the green light for production: a comedy about group of Allied prisoners are held at a German prisoner of war (POW) camp during World War II, and have to carry out missions of subterfuge from within, constantly outwitting the Nazis in command (or so they think) of the camp. Bob plays Colonel Robert Hogan, the senior ranking POW officer; Warner Klemperer (who happened to be Jewish) is Colonel Wilheim Klink, commandant of the camp; John Banner is Sergeant Hans Schultz, the proverbial “Nazi with a heart of gold”; Ivan Dixon as Sergeant James Kinchloe, a aircrew radioman who contacts the underground; Larry Hovis as Sergeant Andrew Carter, expert in chemistry and explosives; Robert Clary as Corporal Louis LeBeau, a Frenchman who is a gourmet chef and patriot; and Richard Dawson as Corporal Peter Newkirk, resident con man and safe cracker.
7 of 24
![bob-crane-family](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-family.jpg?fit=800%2C851&quality=86&strip=all)
Kobal/Shutterstock
Only in the ’60s
“After Donna Reed, my dad got the offer for Hogan’s Heroes,” Robert details. “He gets an offer about a German prisoner of war camp and he says to his agent, ‘No, I want to do a comedy.’ And the agent says, ‘This is a comedy.’ Really, a show like this could only have happened during that era. It would not happen today, but it did in 1965. Of course three years later Mel Brooks would give us The Producers, with the show within the film Springtime for Hitler.”
8 of 24
![hogans-heroes-cast-2](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/hogans-heroes-cast-2.jpg?fit=800%2C419&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Concept Confusion
The thing that amazes Robert is that when Hogan’s Heroes debuted in 1965, it had only been 20 years since the end of World War II, which could have made the concept of the show pretty offensive, particularly due to a mistake many people made. “A lot of people thought that it was a show about a concentration camp,” he says. “No, no, no. It was a prisoner of war camp. That’s where Allied prisoners were being held and any viewer of Hogan’s Heroes will know that the Allies have a secret base there. Everybody had a good vibe about the show even before it debuted; the CBS executives loved it, the sponsors loved it, they were getting good vibes from writers visiting the set and interviewing them and there was just an overall feeling it was going to go. And it did, for six season, which we have to be grateful for.”
9 of 24
![bob-crane-hogans-heroes-cast-3](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-cast-3.jpg?fit=800%2C450&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Making Time for the Fans
It was at the Du-Par’s restaurant, once a chain and now reduced to a couple of locations, where Robert and the rest of the Crane clan got to see Bob interact with his fans and sign autographs for them. “It bothered my mom and I, and later on when my sisters were there with us, but it bothered us more that he was taking time out from eating to sign autographs. At the same time, I saw it in the faces of the people that came up to him; the joy of meeting Hogan. They were thrilled, and I ended up thinking, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’ And my dad absolutely enjoyed it. He never declined an autograph request. And in terms of him staying rooted, TV Guide in an article on him said we lived in ‘unfashionable’ Tarzana, which is out in the San Fernando Valley. We didn’t live in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. We had a nice house, very comfortable, but no trappings of stardom like you would see today.”
10 of 24
![bob-crane-hogans-heroes-bts](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-bts.jpeg?fit=800%2C990&quality=86&strip=all)
Courtesy Robert Crane
A Very Merry ‘Hogan’s’ Christmas
For the first couple of seasons of the show, Robert recalls his family hosting Hogan’s Heroes Christmas parties. He notes, “I remember standing around as a little kid going, ‘Wow, it’s Richard Dawson. It’s John Banner.’ Back then people wore suits and ties to a party, so to see Werner Klemperer in a suit was like, ‘Whoa, this is pretty cool.’ They all enjoyed each other and had a lot of laughs. The show probably could have gone on for another season or two and didn’t. And unlike a lot of shows today, it didn’t get the opportunity to have a final episode.”
11 of 24
![the-bob-crane-show](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/the-bob-crane-show.jpg?fit=780%2C1170&quality=86&strip=all)
20th Television
‘The Bob Crane Show’
With Hogan’s Heroes going off the air in 1971, Bob, who had been at the center of the show’s success, thought the next stage of his career would be relatively easy. It wasn’t. “And that proved to be a problem,” says Robert. “He appeared on Quincy, The Doris Day Show, Love American Style and Night Gallery, but he wanted another show of his own. It took four years to get a series and it turned out to be a flop. It started as a single-camera filmed show called Second Start, about a guy in his forties with a wife and kid who decides he doesn’t want to do his job. I forget what his job, but now he wants to go to med school and become a doctor. It kind of sounds like Carol’s Second Act. This was 1975 and it was Mary Tyler Moore’s company, which was good, but the bad part is it wasn’t with creative people like Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, the ones who did The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda and Phyllis. I don’t want to knock the people who did what eventually became known as The Bob Crane Show, but it turned into a three-camera filmed live in front of an audience show, which he did enjoy. To hear an audience out there and hopefully laughing was amazing to him, but it just didn’t work. It was up against The Waltons, which was huge, and it lasted 13 episodes.”
12 of 24
![bob-crane-beginners-luck-ad1](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-beginners-luck-ad-1.jpg?fit=584%2C497&quality=86&strip=all)
Newspaper Ad
‘Beginner’s Luck’
In the aftermath of The Bob Crane Show, the actor decided to get involved with dinner theater, which he actually ended up doing a lot of. Details Robert, “He got a couple of plays going where he actually kind of rewrote them and tailored them to himself. The main one was Beginner’s Luck, about a cheating husband. Of course it was, like, ‘Come on, really? Are you gong to play that in front of everybody?’ But he did. It played a lot of cities and this was back in the day where you could tour a show in dinner theater. He directed it and it became an easy thing to do, because there were only four characters and they could go city to city.”
13 of 24
![Bob crane hogans heroes cast 4](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-cast-4.jpg?fit=750%2C500&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Trying to Remain Optimistic
Bob tried his hand at a few films without much success, and stuck with Beginner’s Luck and dinner theater in general. “I think overall he remained optimistic,” muses Robert, “despite the fact he was in a business that could be cold. He always felt that something good was going to happen, and I think what helped was being on the road in front of an audience. He’d rather have been in Hollywood or New York filming, but he knew that that night at 8:00 he’s going to be in front of hundreds of people. And he had this play down to such a science that he knew where the laughs were, and I think that made him feel good day-by-day overall. So there was an optimism, but overall he saw other people getting roles that he wasn’t getting and competition was fierce. I think that got to him.”
14 of 24
![bob-crane-and-wife-patti](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-and-wife-patti.jpeg?fit=746%2C579&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Heading Toward the End
“Flash forward to 1978,” states Robert. “He’s on the road in Scottsdale, Arizona, doing the play at the same time he’s going through a divorce from his second wife. He’s got bills to pay and people to support. But that’s where it all came to an end. He was supposed to be in Scarsdale for a month. This was June of 1978 and back then he was friends with a guy named John Carpenter — not the film director — who was a salesman for Sony and other companies that had home video equipment when home video was a big deal. People now with their cameras on their phones have no idea what was involved. My dad had a reel-to-reel deck with a camera that looked like it came from Uzbekistan. It was huge, but that was the equipment of the day. In any case, John Carpenter was a salesperson and my dad met him through Hogan’s Heroes and Richard Dawson, who was also into video.”
15 of 24
![bob-crane-portrait-3](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-portrait-3.jpg?fit=720%2C576&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Things Take a Dark Turn
“Carpenter,” adds Robert, “would visit my dad on the road on sales trips. If my dad’s plan was to be in Chicago, Carpenter would come in for a couple of days and hang out with him. They’d go to clubs at night, look at women and that kind of stuff. But it came to a point in June of 1978 where my dad said that the whole thing with Carpenter had become a pain and wasn’t fun anymore. He had become like a hanger-on. My dad said, ‘I’m going to make changes. I’ve got to get a divorce from Patti; this marriage is going downhill fast. I’m going to get another house in L.A. and start over.’ So he had an optimistic feeling that things were going to change for the better. Unfortunately, one night, the police think it was around 3:00 a.m., he was bludgeoned to death.” His body would be found by acting co-star Victoria Berry, who, worried he didn’t keep an appointment, stopped by his apartment to see if everything was OK.
16 of 24
![bob-crane-murdered-newspaper-headline](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-murdered-newspaper-headline.jpg?fit=640%2C360&quality=86&strip=all)
The Arizona Republic
The Death of Bob Crane
Robert continues the description of what happened, “He was hit twice in the head while he was asleep with a blunt object, which the police think was a tripod from one of his cameras. The Scottsdale police were ill-prepared for this. They had a total of two murders a year there in 1978 and now they’re dealing with a so-called celebrity. They immediately went to John Carpenter, because he had the means and opportunity. It’s funny that a tripod from a camera would be used, because Carpenter would think of this because he’s in the video business. If you were in someone’s apartment looking for a blunt instrument, what would you look for? Carpenter, who they believe killed him, would go for a tripod. So the police immediately latch on to Carpenter as the prime suspect all the way through until the very end.”
17 of 24
![robert-crane](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/robert-crane.jpg?fit=800%2C909&quality=86&strip=all)
Scott Troyanos/AP/Shutterstock
Jumping Ahead to 1994
The unsolved murder of Bob Crane by 1994 was going through the third district attorney serving Scottsdale. “And the third D.A. says it’s now or never,” notes Robert. “The evidence samples are fading away, so they get a new investigation going. A new team takes a fresh look and they figure it’s still Carpenter. And if they don’t proceed now, it’ll never happen. So John Carpenter is brought to trial in 1994 and the trial takes about six weeks. Maybe four. I was on the stand one day and the only thing I could really add to it was the quote from my dad about Carpenter being a pain now and him going to make changes in his life, he’s tired of having this hanger-on around and that kind of thing. But the jury didn’t buy it; there just wasn’t enough there to sell it to them. They acquitted Carpenter who walked free. I believe in 1998 he had a heart attack and died. So I guess it’s still a cold case. Nothing really new has come forward, so it’s actually not a cold case. It’s frozen. The suspect is gone, the DNA evidence is gone — it’s been used and no longer exists. What is anyone going to base anything on? Short of the missing tripod showing up in a landfill somewhere 40 years later, there’s nothing.”
18 of 24
![bob-crane-hogans-heroes-5](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-hogans-heroes-5.jpg?fit=800%2C969&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Remembering That Terrible Day
“My family was not prepared for it,” Robert reflects of the day he learned the news, “and it was the worst time of my life up to then. We were a pretty simple, non-Hollywood family, as I’ve tried to describe to you, and it was a shock. I went to Phoenix to see my dad’s body and they also let me walk through the crime scene where I was actually touching stuff. This is before DNA evidence, so the police were letting me look at things. And then the next morning I saw my dad at the morgue. I volunteered to go. I remember that first night I was in Phoenix and we know my dad is dead, because there had a been a rumor he’d been shot. Shot? How does that happen? You see these things on the news and it’s always somebody else. Those days were in the aftermath of Vietnam and seeing the soldiers who are going through hell and their families and all that, but that’s, again, somebody else. That’s not our family. But now it does happen to our family, and it’s murder and we weren’t prepared at all.”
19 of 24
![bob-crane-portrait-4](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-portrait-4.jpg?fit=698%2C576&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Life Has to Go On
One point he emphasizes is that he and his family never spent a lot of time talking about what happened. “You just have to pick up and move on. And in those years between 1978 and 1994 there were investigations going on, but we didn’t hear much and you’re just in outer space floating out there, grasping for any new news from anyplace. And finally, when they made their last attempt on Carpenter in ’94 with the trial, we thought, ‘Well, something has finally happened.’ But the case just wasn’t strong enough against him. They just couldn’t put the pieces together. Then we went back into outer space, floating out there and that’s the way it’s been for most of the — gosh — 40 years since it happened and my family still has not talked about it or knew how to deal with it. That’s why I — and, yes, this is a cheap plug — wrote the book. I started out interviewing people for Playboy and had a great time and met a lot of people. I’ve written books on Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson and Tom Mankiewicz of the Hollywood elite Mankiewicz family. They always tell you to write what you know, so I finally decided, with my cohort Chris Fryer, to hash it out. So a few years ago we put together a book just from my point of view, as a kid of the family, one of his kids, who did get to see certain things that other family members and friends didn’t.”
20 of 24
![Bob crane book cover 2](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-book-cover-2.jpg?fit=740%2C555&quality=86&strip=all)
Get Hooked Media
The Other Shoe Drops
Those “certain things” were connected with the other side of Bob Crane that most people had not been familiar with. As Robert pointed out earlier, his father had a fascination with photographing and (as it turned out) video taping pretty women in various stages of undress, and during sexual encounters — in hundreds of hours of material, which the public gradually became aware of. “I knew he loved photography from when I was a kid,” Robert explains. “He had good camera equipment and loved taking photos of anything. Our dog, a tree … it didn’t matter. The part that got a little shocking for me was when he started sharing photos. Those included polaroids. A lot of people won’t know what polaroids are, but that was an instant photo where you took it and it came popping out of the camera and you had an instant photo. This is all before home video. He loved this. But what became shocking to me was when he started sharing his activities with people on the set in the form of books of photos. I mean, dad, do you really think this is a good idea?”
21 of 24
![Bob crane superdad](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-superdad.jpg?fit=800%2C602&quality=86&strip=all)
Walt Disney Pictures
Disney Says No
In his bid for work in the 1970s, Bob tried becoming a mainstay at Disney with films like Superdad and Gus. But word got back to the studio that during downtime on the set he began showing these books to coworkers, resulting in the studio not wanting to be in business with him anymore. Robert says, “At the time, Disney was looking for the new Dean Jones, right? So they gave my dad a shot. Now I don’t know if my dad wanted to be the new Dean Jones particularly, but he wanted to work. But he blew it. The word did get back to the executive offices and their response was, ‘What the hell is going on down there on the set? You’ve got the star of the movie sharing polaroids of women with members of the crew?’ Going back to what I said earlier about him being like a big kid having fun, I don’t think he even thought about the consequences of doing something like that.”
22 of 24
![bob-crane-superdad-2](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-superdad-2.jpg?fit=800%2C583&quality=86&strip=all)
Walt Disney Pictures
Theories
“The worst part of it,” says Robert, “is that I did see some videos, not of him, but of women on the road performing in front of the camera, who I guess were willing to do so because it was so new and you got to watch the video tape back instantly. It all sounds pretty grim telling you this, but part of it at the time must have been the shock and excitement over home video and polaroids and instant stuff — and people just couldn’t believe the technology. On the one hand it seems innocent, but on the other it started getting a little sordid to me and dark, but I didn’t say anything to him. Who am I, this little punk, to tell my dad what he should or shouldn’t do? But it had gotten to the point where it cost him work. With him it was never alcohol and it was never drugs or any of the other so-called Hollywood addictions. He just became addicted to that lifestyle. So I really do think it hurt him work-wise and God knows where it led in terms of the end. Some people had a theory for awhile that it was a jealous husband or boyfriend, but the crime scene is not conducive to that theory. A jealous boyfriend or husband would just go berserk in anger. Other people suggested the Mafia, but there was no money owed to anybody and a Mob hit is a pop to the head and you walk away. This was a sloppy crime scene.”
23 of 24
![Bob crane superdad 3](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane-superdad-3.jpg?fit=800%2C399&quality=86&strip=all)
Walt Disney Pictures
And More of Them
“This is getting convoluted, but because my dad was asleep in one of the bedrooms of the apartment, the person who went in there knew the layout enough to know where he was to go in there to hit him with this tripod, they think so that rules out mob, that rules out a jealous boyfriend or someone who would have beaten the hell out of him in rage. This was a different kind of rage. The apartment was not broken into. Nobody kicked in the door; they just walked in. So that really eliminates a lot of people and you have to put Carpenter in the group that would know where he was, how to get in there. But what really happened remains unanswered. And likely always will.”
24 of 24
![bob-crane](https://www.closerweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bob-crane.jpg?fit=710%2C400&quality=86&strip=all)
CBS Television Distribution
Legacies
So with all that unfolded, what is the legacy of Bob Crane. Pulling away from the murder and subsequent scandal, Robert opines, “Good family man with an asterisk, because the idea of marriage and family man for him kind of go against each other. Eliminate the marriage part of it and you’ve got a good family man in terms of being aware of his kids, having fun with them, taking them out on outings and all of that. On top of that, he was born to play Colonel Hogan. I don’t really watch the show much anymore, but every time I do see a clip or a photo of him, he’s the only person I can imagine playing that role.
“He was a pretty good actor, a great drummer. And radio would have been right up there with Hogan in terms of legacy; his live radio show every day was incredible. I would say that radio and Colonel Hogan were the two creative high points of his life, placed next to being a great son to his mom and dad and taking care of his brother, who had alcoholism issues; and, again, taking care of his kids. That’s what I remember most. A lot of unnecessary things happened and he made a lot of bad decisions. I really wish I could have had some kind of final conversation with him about everything. But it didn’t happen.”