The death of actor Bob Crane in Scottsdale, Arizona, 1978


Maybe it's because so few people have actually met celebrities, or "stars", or even actors, in real life that makes people seem to feel comfortable poking fun at them, even in death. Actor Bob Crane, who was murdered in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978, is a star who had fallen. And the joking began almost right away, and continues to this day.

This was before my time, but I remember the TV show "Hogan's Heroes" on re-runs. And I know that Bob Crane was quite a big star in the late 1960s, but after Hogan's Heroes ended, his career as a TV star ended, too. But he was still an actor, and one of the things he did was Dinner Theater. And going from a big TV star in Hollywood to playing a Dinner Theater in Scottsdale in 1972 was a big drop.

But if you've known actors, you know that it's all the same to them, really. The actors I've known have all been pretty much the same, they liked to pretend, they enjoyed being on stage. And the most important thing to know about them is that they're actors, they're not the characters that they play in movies, or TV. They memorize lines, they understand stage directions. They act.

So, no I'm not going to talk about the murder of Bob Crane in this blog post. There is a lot of information out there, and you don't need me for that. But as someone who studies the history of Phoenix, I would like to mention his death. If you would like to make a joke, or a snarky comment about Bob, or the Scottsdale police, I'm just gonna wish you wouldn't. If you need to laugh, I would suggest that you go find an episode of Hogan's Heroes on YouTube, that's what I'm doing.

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane - July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978

July 2, 1972 ad for the Windmill Dinner Theater, Scottsdale, Arizona.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more