A distinctly different kind of dad: Son reveals the highly sexual life, death of Bob Crane
At a very early age, Scotty Crane knew a lot about sex. Even before he fully understood that his father, Bob Crane, had been a famous actor — star of the 1960s TV show "Hogan's Heroes" — he knew what naked women looked like.
Twenty-seven years later, Scotty, now a Seattle-based radio DJ (co-star of KQBZ's "Shaken, Not Stirred"), prefers to focus on other things learned from his dad. "My handwriting is identical to his," he says. "He taught me to play the drums. At the age of 4, he had me doing a little Scotty Crane radio show, just like him."
Bob Crane, who acted on Seattle stages during the 1960s and 1970s and had a second home on Bainbridge Island, was murdered, likely, with a camera tripod in 1978 in an Arizona apartment. Soon stories about his private life began showing up in the press. Part of Scotty's inheritance were photos and videos his father had taken of himself and others — many others — having sex.
He's pored through all of it, culling what he believes best tells his father's story. With Bob Crane's killing still officially unsolved and two movies about his father in the works, Scotty decided to write a book about the man still remembered as the smart, cocky Col. Robert Hogan.
"The Faces of Bob Crane" was supposed to be a small book about how a son views his famous father's life. But with the photos it includes — which became an object of great attention on the Web site Scotty set up — it's become a phenomenon, even before the book has been actually published.
Apparently, people want a peek inside Col. Hogan's bedroom — which his son is happy to provide.
"It wasn't a hush-hush thing," Crane says. "This is what he did."
Bob Crane was a top DJ in Los Angeles before he broke into TV, and this latest chapter of his story also begins on the radio. Last May 31, Scotty went on Howard Stern's national radio show to promote what he then planned to be a self-published book.
People flooded the Web site and overwhelmed the operation. Crane is now looking for a publisher to put the book out, while selling Web subscriptions ($19.95 a month) to view a collection of about 50 photos of dad, most of them involving sexual situations.
So why's he doing it? Why would a son want the world to see pictures of his father involved in orgies, if not just to make some easy money?
In 1994, true-crime writer Robert Graysmith published "The Murder of Bob Crane." In it, he laid out many of the rumors floating around about Crane: that he was into S&M, photographed women without their knowledge and had homosexual affairs.
Scotty Crane strongly denies all the accusations, saying that the photo collection and interviews with friends offer no evidence his father was anything more than a sex addict. "The Faces of Bob Crane" is his argument.
"I'm protecting his image," he says.
Not all the Cranes see the book this way. Robert and Karen, children from Crane's first marriage, say they're disgusted with the book. Karen calls Scotty "slime of the earth." She says: "If there's a buck to be made, Scotty will go for it."
Robert says: "This is not a celebration of my dad."
Scotty is also fighting the makers of "Auto-Focus," a planned movie based on Graysmith's book. (Actor Greg Kinnear has been talking with the producers about playing the role of Crane.)
What has resulted is a strange dispute perhaps possible only when Hollywood's involved. Two parties (three if you count Karen and Robert) are arguing over which version of a life many Americans would view as deviant is the best and truest representation.
"Auto-Focus will come out, and people will take it at face value," says Scotty Crane, whose own script of his dad's life was rejected by studios. "It's hard for me, with my little radio show, to get the real information out there."
Paul Schrader, who will direct "Auto-Focus," has basically called Scotty a hypocrite. In the New York Daily News he accused him of "selling his family's dirty laundry."
Meanwhile, Revolution Studios, which will make a lighthearted "Hogan's Heroes" movie, is surely following the publicity.
"The Faces of Bob Crane" is a picture book. Starting with a shot of Bob Crane as a child, we get pictures of him at work on his radio show, with celebrities, as Hogan. Then come the photos with a series of women, first showing a young Crane and then older, middle aged, out-of-shape. It's a sad story.
In the book are two pages of drawings by Scotty done when he was between 4 and 7. The sketches, in a boy's wild scrawl, are of naked women and men; his familiarity with what was going on around him was so intimate that there's even his handwritten declaration that the Polaroid is the "world's sexiest camera."
Scotty's wife, Michelle Ahern-Crane, said when she first saw the drawings, she cried. "I thought his innocence was stolen," she says.
As the time between now and then lengthens, Crane prefers to look at the good things he got from his dad. One, he says, is an openness about life. Bob Crane showed everyone his pictures, he says, from neighbors to the press. Now, Scotty says he wants to use those photos to tell a story that he insists is not just true but gripping.
"It's got everything," he says. "There's the rise to fame, Hollywood, the mob, the police. It has every item of a great story."
He pauses. "And only his family knows the truth."