BOOK REVIEW: CRANE: Sex , Celebrity, and My Father's Unsolved Murder

 

Robert Crane has stories to tell, that’s for sure.  His dad starred in a popular 1960s TV series, and was found murdered in a Scottsdale Arizona apartment in 1978.  If that sordid saga isn’t enough, Crane also carved out his own little niche in Hollywood, interviewing celebrities for magazines, writing a biography of Jack Nicholson, and spending several years as John Candy’s manager. 

 

Crane’s extremely readable autobiography Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father's Unsolved Murder,  (co-written with his longtime writing partner Christopher Fryer)  has a strange duality about it. One chapter will be about Bob Crane, who starred as Colonel Hogan in CBS’s Hogan’s Heroes, and the next will be about young Robert, who adroitly describes the snags that can come with having a famous father.  And while the rest of the country was shocked to learn that the elder Crane was a roving sex addict with a penchant for filming himself in the act, Crane had known about it for years. At one point he suggests his randy dad should’ve been neutered. “That,” Crane writes, “might have helped.”

 

Still, there’s something ultimately warmhearted about Crane’s story, and as we learn about this “happy go lucky show business family” succumbing to various pressures, the Cranes begin to symbolize every bit of innocence lost during the hectic 1960s.  Hell, Bob Crane even got his start on the old Donna Reed show. How’s that for a symbolic arc?

 

Crane, who has written extensively for various top magazines,  can tell a good story. Chapters about playing games with his dad, or hanging out at WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut, while the old man worked his radio show, are told with a kind of homespun warmth. This is no easy trick, because daddy Crane’s idea of fun was to find a copy of Deep Throat and re-edit it with sounds from the Johnny Carson show (“Hi Yo!), as if he was trying to create the mashup of cheap thrills and cheap TV that swam around in his head.   The elder Crane was a mercurial sort, who not only excelled as a radio personality, but was also a competent  jazz drummer, and an actor who aspired to be the new Jack Lemmon.  But all Bob Crane could do once Hogan was canceled was to tour the country’s dinner theaters and score with the star fuckers of the hinterlands.  He piled them up like pancakes while a twisted feeb named John Carpenter filmed the sessions. Again, hi yo!

 

The generally accepted story is that Carpenter lost his temper when Bob Crane told him they were through as a team. Angered that he’d no longer have access to Bob’s throwaways, Carpenter allegedly bludgeoned the actor with a tripod, leaving him with a head that looked like a squashed melon. The case was never solved, but Robert Crane has another suspect in the story, and it’s none other than his father’s second wife, who certainly had her own reasons for wanting to see her actor/husband dead. The author doesn’t sew up all the loose angles, but he’ll have you wondering.

 

Crane also goes back in time to revisit his own career, first as a magazine writer and aspiring filmmaker, than as a member of Candy’s crew. There’s some inside showbiz stuff, including a funny bit involving Chevy Chase, and a fascinating section that shows Jack Nicholson morphing into a neurotic Hollywood phony in just a matter of years. There’s also enough family squabbling to make you glad you didn’t grow up in La-La land. Crane often compares his life to a Fellini movie. It’s worse. But he succeeds in depicting his dad as not just a degenerate sex-fiend. Judging by the tales shared in this book, Bob Crane was a funny, nice man, and a good, if occasionally absentminded father.  His vices led him into some dark places. Still, many people could’ve had the same habits and not end up dead. The truth is that Bob Crane had bad luck to go along with his bad taste.

 

The author also shares some sad personal moments, such as the death of his first wife, and the early passing of his buddy Candy. In the end, though, this is a story about a man whose father was murdered. Crane isn't too impressed by the idea of “closure”, though he does end the book with scene at an auction house where Colonel Hogan’s leather jacket is sold for a pretty good price. Fellini? More like Billy Wilder.

 

The story reminded me of a theory among psychologists that all men take up professions designed to impress their fathers.  It’s interesting that the son of a sex addict has been a longtime contributor to ‘Playboy’, perhaps hoping he'll get the old man’s attention if he's close enough to the centerfold.

 

- Don Stradley

 

BOOK REVIEW: STRONG BOY...

John L. Sullivan has only been represented a couple of times in movies, most notably by brawny Ward Bond in Gentleman Jim. Bond did a fair job of swaggering, but there was more to Sullivan than strolling into a bar and shouting that he could lick any son of a bitch in the place.  As we learn in Christopher  Klein’s Strong Boy, Sullivan was not only the heavyweight boxing champion for 10 years, but lived a life that would make Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson look like Boy Scouts. 

From the start, Sullivan had the very modern philosophy of “go big or go home.”  For instance, the name “John Sullivan” was generic, even during the 1880s when he first came into the public view, but the insertion of the middle initial “L” gave  it flair.  He wanted you to know that he wasn’t just any John Sullivan from Boston. He was the strongest man on whatever continent he trod upon, and could level you with one blow from his meaty right hand, a shot described by one opponent thusly:  “I thought that a telegraph pole had been shoved against me endways.”

Of course, newspapers loved Sullivan.  Whether he was crushing some opponent in the ring, or drinking his way through a new town, he was good copy. “My excesses have always been exaggerated,” Sullivan said.  But he added, “I am public property, and the press is free to say of me what it pleases.”

Klein’s tasteful, well-written biography chronicles an extraordinary American life and quietly tries to separate the truth from the folklore.   Strong Boy reads like a concise American epic,  starting with the influx of Irish immigrants in the 1800s. Klein doesn’t delve into Sullivan’s psyche, but is content to report on what Sullivan did and said, letting us draw our own conclusions.  The author touches on Sullivan’s well-known racism, but doesn’t dwell on it.  Perhaps Klein felt that focusing on Sullivan’s “drawing of the color line” in regards to his career would dilute  Sullivan’s historical importance.  A more daring  writer might have offered more insights into the touchy subject, but Klein seems squeamish, even writing Sullivan’s favorite slur as "n-----".  

Still, the book is packed with great moments:  Sullivan whipping Paddy Ryan in New Orleans for the American championship in 1882;  the time in 1881 when he fought John Flood, “The Bulls Head Terror”, on a Hudson River barge;  his ambitious “knockout tour” of the country, when he brought his growing  legend to the hinterlands;  brawling for several hours under the boiling Mississippi sun to turn back challenger Jake Kilrain in 1889;  and his surprising success on the theatrical stage, when Sullivan happily learned that his drawing power remained strong long after his retirement from the ring.

Sullivan’s highs were matched, and some would say trumped, by spectacular lows, including  drunken conduct that is still embarrassing to read about more than a century later;  and an egomaniacal streak that can only be ascribed to Sullivan not only reading his own press, but believing it.  “The American publicity machine and celebrity culture was beginning to crank,” Klein writes, “and John L. knew how to pull the levers.” 

It must be said, though, that Sullivan was worthy of the hype. He not only popularized gloved boxing, but managed to dominate his weight class while fighting under both the London bareknuckle ring rules, and the newer Queensberry rules, which is roughly comparable to fighting successfully in both MMA matches and boxing.  And not only did he do it at a time when the police were always trying to shut down fights, and opponents wore spiked boots and  thought nothing of cutting into your legs and feet, but he was usually nursing a hangover.

Klein’s book is well-done, but there are some minor shortcomings.  Like some previous Sullivan biographers, he ends the tale with Sullivan’s 1918  funeral, when the frozen ground at  Mount Calvary Cemetery  had to be blasted with dynamite.  That’s a fine place to end the story, but surely  there was some legacy to be discussed.  Klein is fine at syphoning material from old archives, but his own thoughts are as absent from the story as are black fighters from Sullivan’s record.

There are also occasional lapses into purple prose. “Sullivan’s broad jaw,” Klein writes, “was as solid as the granite chiseled from the quarries of his native New England.”   Lord, that’s a tough one to swallow. Fortunately, most of the florid stuff comes early, as if Klein is clearing his mind of fluff before getting ready for the later chapters, which are nicely written.  But not even Klein can make the potato famine interesting.

Anyone writing about the life of John L. Sullivan will be confronted by holes in the story.  The traditional narrative arc of how this young man came out of Boston with hurricane force, became a larger than life jerk, and then mellowed into a gentleman pig farmer, has always struck me as slightly contrived.  Was he really so content in retirement? Were Sullivan’s early days entirely without signs of the whirlwind to come?  Klein sometimes mentions Sullivan’s generosity,  but gives few significant details.  Sullivan’s  friendship with George Dixon, a black bantamweight known in the papers as “Little Chocolate”, would’ve been ripe for discussion, but again, Klein touches on it and moves along. 

But then, Sullivan has receded so far back into mythology that his biographers are compelled to avoid the murkier stuff in favor of the more obvious  points.  As Klein writes of Sullivan capturing the heavyweight title, “No Bostonians celebrated more than the Irish, who had felt blistered by the red-hot Brahmin scorn since their arrival. Now, one of their own was champion of America. Sullivan instantly became an Irish-American idol, one of the country’s first ethnic heroes.”

True enough.  But it’s not enough.  The Sullivan saga is not merely, as many claim, a product of the time in which he lived. His tale is so primal that we’ve seen it  replayed by  other fighters, from Jack Dempsey, to Muhammad Ali, to Tyson, dominant ring men with oversized personalities who turned out to be all too human.  There is something of the fable in Sullivan’s life, something distinctly American, about a man who had it all, lost it all, and became a better person.  He’s a big American figure who deserves a big American book. But until someone can write it, Klein’s version will do.

 - Don Stradley

THE NIGHTMARE...

I've experienced 'sleep paralysis' similar to what is described in The Nightmare, a chilling documentary from director Rodney Ascher. I'll be in the middle of a sound sleep, when I sense that someone is in the room with me. I try to wake up, but I'm frozen in my bed and can't speak. The person, who looks a bit like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, edges closer. Finally, with a great effort, I'm able to shake myself awake. That ends it. But it makes for an uncomfortable night.

Unlike the people in the documentary, I've only experienced this a few times, but the effect was unforgettable. The people in the movie claim to experience it nightly, which would be more than I could handle. Also, I'm certain my experience is just a bad dream, while the people in The Nightmare are convinced that something more sinister and otherworldly is going on. When you hear some of their stories, you may be convinced, too.

Eight people from various locations are interviewed. They vary in age and social background, but they tell the same story. In short, they are continuously stalked in their sleep by shadowy figures. Some of the apparitions are playful - one man recalls being tickled by them - but most of them are menacing. A whisper from one of them is filled with the howls of tormented souls. A woman describes one of these shadow people hovering over her and feeling as cold as death. 

A pattern emerges. Not surprisingly, it's psycho-sexual. One of the women recalls being raped in her sleep. A man in the movie claims a shadowy figure taunted him about masturbating in his mother's bed. After awhile I was convinced that all of the people being interviewed had been molested as children because the 'visitors' appear to walk freely into their bedrooms, and usually climb into bed with them. (This idea of childhood trauma is never developed, though one of the women being interviewed reveals that she'd been beaten often as a child.) The shadow people are occasionally hostile. One young man recounts a demonic figure appearing in his room and hissing, 'I know what you are, and I'm going to kill you.' No wonder the poor guy looks as if he hasn't had a good night's sleep in years.

These peculiar visitations are recreated for the movie, and they're chillingly effective. In fact, these scenes are scarier than most of the horror movies I've seen this year. Rodney Ascher is an interesting filmmaker. He gave us Room 237, which explored a mythology built around Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. He's obviously intrigued by urban legends, and his films are effective because he respects these legends and treats them accordingly. He also respects the people he interviews, which gives his work a solemn, serious tone.  You can tell these people in the movie are happy and relieved to have someone hear them out.

Of course, many of the stories in The Nightmare could be explained away as dreams. Some, though, are not so easily dismissed, such as the time two people in the same bed experience very similar 'visitations' from a dark figure with red eyes. Both wake up screaming. It's weird. Is it possible that their proximity made them pick up each other's dreams, like a radio frequency?

It's hard to understand why our minds would play such evil tricks on us. From what I understand about sleep paralysis, the human body goes into something like suspended animation as we sleep. This is to protect us, more or less, from falling out of bed. But why would our minds be so filled with menacing characters? Some suggest that these dream figures are alien presences, or creatures from another dimension. I'm not sure if that's valid or just hokum. On the other hand, I don't know what causes so many people to be terrorized in their sleep by the same shadow shapes, and that bugs me. 

I felt sorry for the people in this documentary. They've sought help, but as one of them says, if a doctor doesn't know what you have, he doesn't care. I find it interesting that one of the women became a born again Christian, and no longer suffers from these frightening visits. The others seem resigned to their fate. One even accepts that he'll probably die in his sleep someday. What makes The Nightmare so discomforting is that the shadow men seem hell-bent on winning. What's less clear is what they're trying to win.

ANIMALS...

Even in an era where caped superheroes dominate the local movie screens, there’s always room for a good drug movie.  Heroin, it seems, is just like Jell-O.

 

Junkies are, historically speaking, good fodder for movies. I vaguely remember seeing a late night showing of Frank Sinatra in The Man With The Golden Arm many years ago.  He shivered and perspired, trying to kick his habit, looking less like a real drug addict and more like modestly talented actor hoping to impress the Academy voters.  Drugstore Cowboy made junkies look as dumb and desperate as they probably are, with some surrealism thrown in.  Trainspotting turned heroin addiction into an ugly comedy with a rockin’ soundtrack.  To their everlasting credit, the makers of Animals don’t go in for nightmare imagery or histrionics.  Jude and Bobbie, the two main characters, are just a pair of lost souls being slowly destroyed.   

 

In the wake of those earlier films, viewers might expect to see at least a few scenes of torment and torture, or hear a few screams of anguish. But we don’t see the addicts at their worst, just a few scenes of them shooting up in public toilets.  Jude and Bobbie are not exactly Sid and Nancy.  They pull off some con jobs to get money, but they aren’t the swashbuckling rebels that have made most drug movies somewhat entertaining.  If there’s a resemblance to any couple in previous drug movies, it’s to Al Pacino and Kitty Wynn, the colorless pair from Panic in Needle Park (1971).  

 

I mention those previous movies because the druggie film is a genre in itself, as predictable as film noir or a horror movie, with certain characters going through the same ordeals as those in previous films.  All addicts seem to have the same story: they get hooked, they enjoy it for a while, they experience some sort of downfall, and then they try to clean up.  Someone dies;  someone survives.  Animals is no different than the drug films that came before it, though it’s more low key.  Jude has rotting teeth.  Bobbie thinks she has breast cancer.  They live in their car and they’re running out of money.  Jude loves her, and often stares at her with moony eyes.  She appears to love him, too, but she’s harder to pin down.  Then again, he gets her to pretend to be an escort so they can rip off unsuspecting guys.  Is she doing it for him, or the junk?

 

The movie has a soft-edged, dreamy effect.  It never quite gains momentum, and the few dramatic events are small.  The story might have made an interesting memoir, but as cinema it feels light and airy.  Still, it’s more watchable than most of the ‘indy’ stuff that has come down the pike in recent months. 

 

This may be because of the terse screenplay by David Dastmalchian, who also stars as Jude.  The story was allegedly personal to him, though I don’t know to what degree.  Jude appears to be a naïve bumbler, quickly coming up with seedy ways to make money even though he claims to have come from a privileged background.  At one point he wonders how a well-to-do white kid became addicted, ruminating briefly on his cultured background.  He doesn’t go any deeper than that, which is just as well.  Dastlmalchian and director  Collin Schiffli are more interested in showing people trying to get out of the trap, than falling into it.

 

Bobbie is less contemplative than Jude. She’s in love the way a teenager is in love. She probably loves him because he’s always telling her how wonderful she is. But she doesn’t take advantage of his worship.  She’s a pretty good sport, considering they spend most of their nights sleeping in the front seat of his old shitbox. At one point we see Jude straining at the toilet, suffering from constipation.  “How’d it go?” Bobbie asks later. “Not even an M&M,” he says.  Only a couple truly devoted to each other could engage in such dialog.

 

As Bobbie, Kim Shaw is playful and believable as an object of desire.  She never seems quite as smart as Jude, though she proves in the end that she’s a survivor.  Jude, though he seems more intelligent, proves in the end that he’s not as smart as he thinks.  Loving Bobbie and trying to maintain a heroin addiction proves too much for him.  I like the way he takes it, though.  He may turn out to be a reasonable, decent man.

 

Fortunately, neither kid dies.  Had this been a 1970s film, one of them would’ve croaked, to be sure.  At the very least, a baby or a puppy would’ve died.  Instead, it’s 2015 and people are a bit less fatalistic these days.  The other curse of indy films circa 2015 is that the makers of the movie fear going over the top.  The film, at times, tries so hard to be unemotional that it flatlines.  This is a mistake, because Jude and Bobbie are so insipid that there should’ve been something loud or violent keep us interested.  Jude lingers around some shady drug dens, and has a run in with some cops, but that isn’t enough.  Why do we remember Easy Rider?  Because everybody gets blown away in the end. 

 

Still, I liked Animals.  It is the movie it wanted to be, and even if it doesn’t say much, it does so in its own voice.