The Les Crane Show

Today would have been the 90th birthday of talk show host and actor Les Crane (Lesley Stein, 1933-2008).

There is an Icarus-like quality to Crane’s brief fame. He was nationally prominent for a time, but I had only heard of him in the course of researching show business (i.e., his name never tumbled my way in the course of living in the culture at large). A New York City native, Crane studied English at Tulane, served in the air force, and then broke into radio at local stations in San Antonio and Philadelphia in 1958.

Krane’s break came when he was hired to host a late night program on KGO radio in San Francisco in 1961. Consider the time and the place! Folk music, rock and roll, poetry and politics, the civil rights movement. Somebody who was alert and engaging could make a big impression by wading into the thick of that and Crane did, booking nationally important figures and not shying away from dissenting voices and controversy. By 1963 he had traded up to a late television talk show at ABC’s local affiliate in New York City. Known originally as Night Line, it was renamed The New Les Crane Show when it went national a few months later, going head to head with The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (Carson had only only just taken over for Jack Paar at the time). In 1965, the show was rebranded ABC’s Nightlife and was moved to Los Angeles. Unable to compete with Carson, it was cancelled in November of that year.

Crane’s show was characterized by a couple of things. One is his good looks and personality. He seemed to model himself on Edward R. Murrow and was known for a celebrity interviewing style that sought confrontation and fireworks, a model for later figures like Tom Snyder, Bill Boggs, and Phil Donahue. The other factor is his association with youth and the counterculture. Crane’s show was where you went to see interviews with and/or performances by Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and The Rolling Stones, and to hear conversations with Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, Norman Mailer, and Muhammad Ali, as well as conservative figures like William F. Buckley, Ayn Rand, and George Wallace. For a time, his sidekick on the show was Nipsey Russell!

Throughout 1965, Crane had also been a frequent panelist on multiple game shows like Match Game and To Tell the Truth, as well as a guest on other talk shows. This helped him pivot into new territory when his show was cancelled. A celebrity now himself, he sought a second career as an actor. An episode of Burke’s Law was his first acting credit. In 1966, he married Tina Louise, then still on the hit show Gilligan’s Island. The two would later appear together as a couple on Love American Style. Crane also guest star on The Virginian, Ironside, and It Takes a Thief. He was essentially done with screen acting by 1969, although a 1967 pilot he’d starred in called I Love a Mystery didn’t air until 1973.

Meanwhile, Crane had continued hosting radio shows. In 1971 he recorded a recitation of that kitschy poem Desiderata (“Go placidly amid the noise and haste…”) which was released as a 45 RPM single, and he won a Grammy for his performance. His daughter, writer/producer Caprice Crane was born in 1970. Crane and Louise divorced in 1971. Crane’s next wife was named — wait for it — Ginger!

Always one to tack with prevailing winds, Crane changed careers completely in the early 1980s, becoming the head of a gaming software company. Say, what is this, The Big Chill?

For more on show biz history, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous; and keep an eye out for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.