Updated: August 02, 2025

Robert Edward Crane ( July 13, 1928 to June 29, 1978 ) was an American actor, drummer, radio personality and disc jockey known for starring in the CBS sitcom Hogan's Heroes.

Crane was a drummer from age 11 and began his entertainment career as a radio personality, beginning in Hornell, New York and later in Connecticut. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he hosted the number-one rated morning radio show. In the early 1960s, Crane moved into acting, eventually landing the lead role of Colonel Robert Hogan in Hogan's Heroes. The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Crane received two Emmy Award nominations.

Crane's career declined after Hogan's Heroes. He became frustrated with the few roles that he was being offered and began performing in dinner theater. In 1975 he returned to television with the NBC series The Bob Crane Show, but the series received poor ratings and was cancelled after thirteen weeks. Afterward, Crane returned to performing in dinner theater and also appeared in occasional guest spots on television.

Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment while on tour in June 1978 for a dinner theater production of Beginner's Luck. In the 1990s his friend John Henry Carpenter was tried for the murder but was acquitted, and the case remains officially unsolved. Crane's previously uncontroversial public image suffered due to the suspicious nature of his death and posthumous revelations about his personal life.

Early Life:

Bob Crane was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the younger of two sons to Rose Mary ( Nee Ksenich ) and Alfred Thomas Crane the original spelling of the family name was Crean. Crane spent his childhood and teenaged years in Stamford.

Crane began playing drums at the age of 11, and by junior high was organizing local drum and bugle parades with his neighborhood friends. He joined his high school's orchestra and its marching and jazz bands. Crane also played for the Connecticut and Norwalk Symphony Orchestras as part of their youth orchestra program. He graduated from Stamford High School in 1946. Two years later, he enlisted for two years in the Connecticut Army National Guard and was honorably discharged in 1950. The previous year, he married his high-school sweetheart, Anne Terzian. The couple had three children: Robert David, Deborah Anne, and Karen Leslie.

Early Career:

In 1950, Crane began his career in radio broadcasting at WLEA in Hornell, New York. He soon moved to Connecticut stations WLAD in Danbury, WBIS in Bristol and then WICC in Bridgeport, a 1,000-watt operation with a signal covering the northeastern portion of the New York metropolitan area. In 1956, Crane was hired by CBS Radio to host the morning show at its West Coast flagship KNX in Los Angeles, partly to re-energize that station's ratings and partly to halt his erosion of suburban ratings at WCBS in New York City. In Los Angeles, Crane filled the broadcast with sly wit, drumming and such guests as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope. His show quickly topped the morning ratings with adult listeners, and he became "king of the Los Angeles airwaves."

Crane's acting ambitions led to guest-hosting for Johnny Carson on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? and appearances on The Twilight Zone ( Uncredited ), Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and General Electric Theater. After Carl Reiner appeared on his radio show, Crane persuaded Reiner to book him for a guest appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Donna Reed Show: ( 1963 to 1964 )

After seeing Crane's performance on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Donna Reed offered him a guest shot on her program, ABC's The Donna Reed Show. After the success of that episode, Crane's character, Dr. David Kelsey, was incorporated into the show's storyline, and Crane became a regular cast member, beginning with the episode "Friends and Neighbors." Crane continued to work full-time at KNX during his stint on The Donna Reed Show, running back and forth from the KNX studio at Columbia Square to Columbia Studios. He left the show in December 1964.

Hogan's Heroes: ( 1965 to 1971 )

In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a CBS television sitcom set in a World War II POW camp. Hogan's Heroes involved the sabotage and espionage missions of Allied soldiers, led by Colonel Robert Hogan, from under the noses of the oblivious Germans guarding them. The show was an immediate ratings hit, finishing in the top ten in its first year. The series lasted for six seasons on CBS, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1966 and 1967.

After having a love affair with Hogan co-star Cynthia Lynn, the actress who played Helga, Crane became romantically involved in 1968 with Lynn's replacement Patricia Olson, who played Hilda under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. Crane divorced Terzian in 1970, just before their 21st anniversary, and married Olson on the set of the show later that year, with series co-star Richard Dawson serving as best man. The couple's son, Robert Scott "Scotty" Crane, was born in 1971,[1] and they later adopted a daughter, Ana Marie.

Crane's son Robert David later alleged that Crane was not the biological father of any of Olson's children. When they were married in 1970, Olson was already pregnant, but Crane had had a vasectomy in 1968 while he was still married to Terzian. Crane and Olson separated in 1977, and were mere weeks away from finalizing their divorce at the time of Crane's death in June 1978.

After Hogan's Heroes:

In 1968, Crane and Hogan co-stars Werner Klemperer, Leon Askin and John Banner appeared with Elke Sommer in a feature film, The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, set in the divided city of Berlin during the Cold War. In 1969, Crane starred with Abby Dalton in a dinner theater production of Cactus Flower.

Following the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes in 1971, Crane appeared in two Disney films: Superdad ( 1973 ), in the title role, and a small role in Gus ( 1976 ). In 1973, Crane purchased the rights to a comedy play called Beginner's Luck and began touring it, as its star and director, at the Showboat Dinner Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida; the La Mirada Civic Theatre in California; the Windmill Dinner Theatre in Scottsdale, Arizona; and other dinner theaters around the country.

Between theater engagements, Crane guest-starred in a number of television shows, including Police Woman, Gibbsville, Quincy, M.E. and The Love Boat. In 1975, he returned to television with his own series, The Bob Crane Show on NBC, which was cancelled after fourteen episodes.

In early 1978, Crane taped a travel documentary in Hawaii and recorded an appearance on the Canadian afternoon cooking show Celebrity Cooks; neither aired in the U.S. His appearance on Celebrity Cooks was broadcast on CBC Television five times beginning in 1978, and was dramatized in the biopic film Auto Focus. Claims that Crane had been distraught during the taping and had made inappropriate jokes about death and sex have been denied by the show's producers and production staff, who have stated that taping would have stopped or the episode cancelled if anything inappropriate had been said.

Private Life and Murder:

Crane frequently videotaped and photographed his own sexual escapades. During the run of Hogan, Dawson introduced Crane to John Henry Carpenter, a regional sales manager for Sony Electronics who often helped famous clients with their video equipment. The two men struck up a friendship and began visiting bars and nightclubs together. Crane attracted many women due to his celebrity status, and he introduced Carpenter to them as his manager. The two men videotaped their joint sexual encounters. Crane's son Scotty later insisted that all of the women were aware of the videotaping and consented to it, but several claimed that they had no idea that they had been recorded until they were informed by Scottsdale police after Crane's murder. During their friendship, Carpenter became national sales manager at the consumer electronics company Akai and arranged his business trips to coincide with Crane's touring schedule, allowing the two to continue videotaping their sexual encounters.

Crane and Valdis' gravestone, bearing their portraits and the banner "Hogan and Hilda, Together Forever" In June 1978, Crane was living in the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale during a run of Beginner's Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre. On the afternoon of June 29, his co-star Victoria Ann Berry entered his apartment after he failed to show up for a lunch meeting, and discovered his body. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never identified, though investigators believed it to be a camera tripod. An electrical cord had been tied around his neck.

Crane's funeral was held on July 5, 1978 at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, Los Angeles. An estimated 200 family members and friends attended, including John Astin, Astin's wife Patty Duke and Carroll O'Connor. Pallbearers included Hogan producer Edward Feldman, co-stars Robert Clary and Larry Hovis, and Crane's son Scotty. He was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. Olson later had his remains relocated to Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood, and she was buried beside him in 2007 under her stage name of Sigrid Valdis.