TV CONFIDENTIAL Archives: Show No. 280 with Robert Crane

Show No. 280 with Robert Crane

Original Airdate: Week of June 17-22, 2015

First hour: Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen remember comedian George Carlin, who passed away in 2008 during This Week in TV History. Also in this hour: Greg Ehrbar reviews the recent DVD release of Flintstones WWE. 

Second hour: Ed, Tony and Donna welcome Robert Crane, co-author of CRANE: Sex, Celebrity and My Father’s Unsolved Murder, a memoir of growing up with Bob Crane as a father before, during and after Hogan’s Heroes that also provides a first-person account and commentary of the investigation and prosecution of the Bob Crane murder case, from the perspective of the Crane family.

Imagine, If You Will: Bob Crane, John Candy and Rod Serling: Next on TVC

Authors Robert Crane and Anne Serling will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing June 24-29 at the following times and venues:

WROM Radio
Detroit, MI
Wednesday 6/24
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Sunday 6/28
8pm ET, 5pm PT
2am ET, 11pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at WROMRadio.net

Share-a-Vision Radio
San Francisco Bay Area
Friday 6/26
7pm ET, 4pm PT
10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Listen Live button at KSAV.org
Use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in KSAV
or hear us on the KSAV channel on CX Radio Brazil

Indiana Talks
Marion, IN
Saturday 6/27
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Sunday 6/28
6pm ET, 3pm PT
Click on the player at IndianaTalks.com
or use the TuneIn app on your smartphone and type in Indiana Talks

KSCO-AM 1080
San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA
KOMY-AM 1340
La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA
Sunday 6/28
10am ET, 7am PT
Also streaming at KSCO.com

Boost Radio Network
Paramus, NJ
Sunday 6/28
8pm ET, 5pm PT
Click on the On the Air button at BoostRadioNetwork.com

KHMB-AM and FM
Half Moon Bay, CA
Sunday 6/28
9pm PT
Monday 6/29
Midnight ET
Click on the Listen Live button at KHMBRadio.com
or use the Live365 app on your smartphone and type in KHMB

RadioSlot.com
San Francisco, CA
Monday 6/29
10pm ET, 7pm PT
with replays Tuesday thru Friday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Click on the Talk Slot button at RadioSlot.com

PWRNetwork
Ann Arbor, MI
Various times throughout the week
on the Entertainment Channel at PWRNetwork.com


This week’s show will feature Part 2 of our conversation with Robert Crane, the eldest son of Bob Crane, and the co-author of CRANE: Sex, Celebrity and My Father’s Unsolved Murder, a memoir of growing up with Bob Crane as a father before, during and after Hogan’s Heroes that also provides an account and commentary of the investigation and prosecution of the Bob Crane murder case, from the perspective of the Crane family.

We will take you back to the events of June 29, 1978, when Bob was summoned to the crime scene in Scottsdale, Arizona and identified his father’s body — but we’ll also ask about the years in which Bob worked with, and became good friends with, comedian John Candy. We will play Part 2 of our conversation with Robert Crane in our second hour.

Also this week: Sunday, June 28 marks the 40^th anniversary of the death of Rod Serling. With that in mind, we will mark the occasion by replaying our conversation from May 2013 with Rod’s daughter, Anne Serling, author of AS I KNEW HIM: My Dad, Rod Serling.

Most conversations about Rod Serling these days to focus on him being as a creative force… an entity, if you will. Rarely, if at all, do we think of Rod Serling as a person — a real live, flesh and blood human being who was a loving husband and a devoted father who played on the floor with his dogs, had nicknames for everyone in the family, liked to watch The Flintstones and pull practical jokes, and had a laugh that was as infectious as his zest for life itself. That’s the image of Rod Serling that Anne evokes in her book. Very close to her father, she was devastated by his death but eventually overcame her grief, partially with the help of The Twilight Zone. We will replay our conversation with Anne Serling during our first hour.

REMINDER: Robert Crane has provided us with an autographed copy of CRANE: Sex, Celebrity and My Father’s Unsolved Murder as a giveaway to one lucky listener. If you’d like to like to win that free copy, let us who know who YOU would cast in a movie version of Hogan’s Heroes. Email us your Dream Cast to talk@tvconfidential.net or (send us a message through our Facebook page, Facebook.com/TVCONFIDENTIAL) before 11:59pm ET on Wednesday, July 1. The winner will be selected from a random drawing. We will announce the winner on the July 8-13 edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL.
TV CONFIDENTIAL: A radio talk show about television
Wed and Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT on WROM Radio
Fri 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org and CX Radio Brazil
Sat 8pm ET, 5pm PT and Sun 6pm ET, 3pm PT on Indiana Talks
Sun 10am ET, 7am PT KSCO-AM 1080 (San Jose, Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA)
Sun 10am ET, 7am PT KOMY-AM 1340 (La Selva Beach and Watsonville, CA)
Sun 8pm ET, 5pm PT Boost Radio Network
Sun 9pm PT, Mon Mid ET on KHMB-AM and FM (Half Moon Bay, CA)
Mon 10pm ET, 7pm PT on The Radio Slot Network
Replays various times throughout the week on the Entertainment Channel at PWRNetwork
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and now on your mobile phone via Stitcher.com
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Dick Van Patten

I appreciate Eight is Enough. It made me recognizable.

Dick Van Patten

Richard Vincent "Dick" Van Patten

December 9, 1928 – June 23, 2015

Dick Van Patten died today at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at age 86. Complications from diabetes were the listed cause.

Van Patten's career in show business began as a child actor on Broadway in 1935 in Tapestry In Gray starring Melvyn Douglas. He was billed as Dickie Van Patten and went on to appear in twelve other Broadway plays as a teenager. He moved on to television and movies with the role of Nels Hansen in the 1949 TV series Mama, which ran from 1949 to 1957, and as patriarch Tom Bradford on Eight Is Enough, 1977 to 1981. 

Patten also appeared in episodes of Sanford and Son, Banacek, Arrested Development, The Brian Keith Show, Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, Adam-12, Emergency!, and Happy Days. In 1999 and 2000, he costarred with Hugh O'Brian, Richard Roundtree, Deborah Winters, and Richard Anderson in the Warren Chaney miniseries Y2K – World in Crisis.

Van Patten had numerous leading roles in motion pictures including Joe Kidd, The Snowball Express and The Santa Trap. He played the supporting role of Usher #1 alongside Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in the 1973 film Soylent Green.

He has appeared in several films directed by Mel Brooks, including High Anxiety, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, as well as cameos in the music videos for "Smells Like Nirvana" and "Bedrock Anthem" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, and on The Weird Al Show.

He also was a commentator for the World Series of Poker from 1993 to 1995.

On January 12, 2008, Van Patten received a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.

On November 1, 2009, Phoenix Books published Eighty Is Not Enough!, a book co-authored by Van Patten and Robert Baer in which Van Patten shares an 80-year journey of insights and anecdotes through the entertainment industry. He discusses his journey from his humble beginning in Queens, New York; his rise as a childhood star on Broadway during the Great Depression; working as an actor on the radio; the advent of television and his role in the second-ever live situation comedy Mama; a rough period between acting gigs; a rise back to the top that led the TV icon to the lead role on the popular hit show Eight Is Enough and subsequent roles in television and movies.

Van Patten played a role in the 2009 film Opposite Day as Jack Benson.

An animal enthusiast, Van Patten co-founded Dick Van Patten's Natural Balance Pet Foods in 1989. He founded National Guide Dog Month which began in 2008 to raise awareness and money for non-profit guide dog schools in the United States accredited by the International Guide Dog Federation.

Good Night Mr. Van Patten

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: June 2015 PART IV

Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:

CLICK HERE for a list of Stations

As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.

June 25, 1993

Last night of Late Night with David Letterman. Offbeat comic Letterman, passed over by NBC for the host seat on The Tonight Show after Johnny Carson's retirement, left the network to launch a rival show on CBS.

David Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1947. From an early age, he aspired to host his own talk show. He became a stand-up comic and a wacky weatherman on a local TV station. After years on the stand-up comedy circuit, he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1978 and served as the program's guest host 50 times. In 1980, Letterman had a short-lived morning variety show, The David Letterman Show, which won two Emmys.

He launched his popular late-night TV show in 1982. His offbeat humor and goofy stunts spoofed traditional talk shows. Antics like wearing a Velcro suit and throwing himself at a wall or tossing eggs into a giant electric fan, Letterman gained a large following, especially among college students. Regular features included his "Top Ten List," "Stupid Pet Tricks," and tours of the neighborhood. He also frequently wandered with his camera into other NBC shows in progress. Over more than 11 years, the show won five Emmys and 35 nominations.

When Carson announced his retirement in 1992, Letterman and rival comic Jay Leno engaged in a heated battle for the coveted host slot. When Letterman was passed over, he left NBC for CBS, where his new program, Late Show, outperformed Leno's show almost every week in its first year. 

However, Leno pulled ahead the following year and maintained a strong lead. Letterman underwent emergency heart surgery in 2000 and was off the show for five weeks. In recent years, Leno's lead over Letterman in viewership has slimmed.

June 26, 1975

Sonny and Cher's divorce becomes final. With a string of pop hits in the mid-1960s that began with the career-defining "I Got You Babe" (1965), Sonny and Cher Bono established themselves as the most prominent and appealing married couple in the world of popular music. Hipper than Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and far more fun than John and Yoko, Sonny and Cher projected an image of marital harmony that a lot of people could relate to—an image not so much of perfect bliss, but of a clearly imperfect yet happy mismatch. Mr. and Mrs. Bono traded on that image professionally for a solid decade, even several years past the point that it was true. After 13 years together as a couple and six years of marriage—the last three for the cameras—Sonny and Cher were legally divorced on this day in 1975.

By the time they were divorced, Sonny and Cher were primarily known as television stars thanks to their hugely successful NBC variety show, but their romantic and professional relationships started in the Southern California music industry in the early 1960s. In 1962, Salvatore "Sonny" Bono was working as a producer, gofer and sometime percussionist for the legendary producer Phil Spector when he met Cherilyn Sarkasian in a Los Angeles coffee shop. Just 16 years old and recently dropped out of her Fresno, California, high school, Cherilyn was soon singing backup on such legendary Spector-produced hits as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (Righteous Brothers, 1964), "Da Doo Ron Ron" (The Crystals, 1963) and "Be My Baby" (Ronettes, 1963). The couple released one unsuccessful single under the name "Caesar and Cleopatra" before landing a #1 pop hit in 1965 with "I Got You Babe" under their new name, Sonny and Cher.

Ultimately, Sonny and Cher had only a few memorable hits after their first, the biggest of them being 1967's "The Beat Goes On." By 1968, in fact, Sonny and Cher were essentially finished as a viable recording act, and Sonny's efforts to establish a film career for the pair were foundering. A move to Las Vegas, where they developed a nightclub act featuring playful, between-song bickering, is what ultimately resurrected Sonny and Cher's career. By 1971, they were starring in a top-10 television program built around that act that would run off and on, in various incarnations, until 1977. Two years later, they would be living in separate homes and with new romantic partners, but it was not until two years after that that their split became public and their divorce final on June 26, 1975. 

June 27, 1945

FCC allocates TV channels.

On this day in 1945, the FCC allocates airwaves for 13 TV stations. Before World War II, a few experimental TV shows had been broadcast in New York, but the war postponed the development of commercial television. With the allocation of airwaves, commercial TV began to spread. The first regularly scheduled network series appeared in 1946, and many Americans viewed television for the first time in 1947, when NBC broadcast the World Series. Since privately owned television sets were still rare, most of the series' estimated 3.9 million viewers watched the games from a bar.

June 28, 1975

Rod Serling dies at age 50 after open-heart surgery. Born in 1924 in Syracuse, New York, Serling became one of early television's most successful writers, best known for the anthology series The Twilight Zone, which he created, wrote, and hosted.

In 1959, CBS aired the first episode of The Twilight Zone. Serling fought hard for creative control, hiring writers he respected (such as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont) and launched himself into weekly television. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike the earlier Playhouse 90. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

Serling drew on his own experiences for many episodes, with frequent stories about boxing, military life and aircraft pilots, which integrated his firsthand knowledge. The series also incorporated Serling's progressive social views on racial relations and the like, which were somewhat veiled by the science fiction and fantasy elements of the shows. Occasionally, however, Serling could be quite blunt, as in the episode "I Am The Night — Color Me Black", where racism and hatred causes a dark cloud to form in the American South before eventually spreading elsewhere. Serling was also progressive on matters of gender, with many stories featuring quick-thinking, resilient women, although he also wrote stories featuring shrewish, nagging wives.

The show lasted five seasons (four using a half-hour format, with one half-season using an hour-long format), winning awards and critical acclaim for Serling and his staff. While having a loyal fan base, the program never had huge ratings and was twice canceled, only to be revived. After five years and 156 episodes, 92 of them written by Serling himself, he wearied of the show. In 1964, he decided to let the third cancellation be final.

Serling sold his rights to the series to CBS. His wife later claimed that he did this partly because he believed the studio would never recoup the cost of the show, which frequently went over budget.

In 1969, NBC aired a Serling-penned pilot for a new series, Night Gallery. Set in a dimly lit museum which was open after hours, the pilot film featured Serling (as on-camera host) playing the part of curator introducing three tales of the macabre, unveiling canvases that would appear in the subsequent story segments (its brief first season rotated as one spoke of a four-series programming wheel titled Four in One), focused more on gothic horror and the occult than did The Twilight Zone. Serling, no longer wanting the burden of an executive position, sidestepped an offer to retain creative control of content—a decision he would come to regret. Although discontented with some of producer Jack Laird's script and creative choices, Serling maintained a stream of creative submissions and ultimately wrote over a third of the series' scripts. By season three however, Serling began to see many of his script contributions rejected. With his complaints ignored, the disgruntled host dismissed the show as "Mannix in a cemetery". Night Gallery lasted until 1973.

Subsequent to The Twilight Zone, Serling moved onto cinema screens and continued to write for television. In 1964, he scripted Carol for Another Christmas, a television adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It was telecast only once, December 28, 1964, on ABC.

On May 25, 1962, Serling guest starred in the episode "The Celebrity" of the CBS sitcom Ichabod and Me with Robert Sterling and George Chandler.

He wrote a number of screenplays with a political focus, including Seven Days in May (1964) about an attempted military coup against the President of the United States; Planet of the Apes (1968); and The Man (1972) about the first African American President.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

 

 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa