bob crane

Obituaries in the News
By The Associated Press � 4 hours ago


Robert (Bob) Noll, 71, Plainfield, Wis., (formerly of Oak Creek, Wis.) passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early morning of Nov. 18, 2007.


Bob was born on Nov. 8, 1936, in Milwaukee, Wis., to the late Edward and Helen (Schlut) Noll. Bob entered the Army and served overseas in Germany, where he was a crane operator. Bob was extremely proud of his military service, often reminiscing with family members about the sights he had seen and the duties he had performed. Bob eventually became a journeyman tile setter and took great pride in doing his job well.


In his free time, Bob was an avid hunter, fisherman and golfer. He loved nothing more than spending time in the outdoors mastering these sports.


Bob is survived by his brother, Richard (Dick) Noll and his wife, Rosemary; his three children, their spouses and his grandchildren, Terri and Scott Spinler and their children, Courtney, Lindsey and Cameron, Pulaski Wis.; Tim and Lori Noll, and their children, Melissa, Amber and Brandon, Green Bay, Wis.; and Tisha and Paul Hodgins, and their children, Grady, Nolan and Kegan, Cudahy, Wis.


He was preceded in death by his parents, Edward and Helen (Schlut) Noll, his sister-in-law, Fay Noll, cousins and grandparents.


Funeral services will be on Wednesday at 3 p.m. at the Hardell-Holly Funeral Home in Almond. Visitation will be from 2 to 3 p.m. on Wednesday at the funeral home. Military rites will follow the services.


HARDELL-HOLLY



ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) ― Patricia Crane, who played Col. Klink's sexy blond secretary Hilda on "Hogan's Heroes" and married the show's star, has died. She was 72.

Crane, who was known on stage as Sigrid Valdis, died Oct. 14, a spokeswoman for the Orange County coroner's office said. She died of lung cancer at her daughter Ana Sarmiento's home, her son said.

Crane played Hilda for five seasons on "Hogan's Heroes," the 1965-71 CBS situation comedy about Allied prisoners in a World War II German POW camp. Hilda and Bob Crane's Col. Hogan flirted playfully in front of the screen, but in 1970 were married for real ― on the show's set.

Eight years later, he was found bludgeoned to death in an apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Patricia Olson was born in 1935 in Bakersfield, Calif., and grew up in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, finding both runway and print modeling jobs as a teenager. After graduating high school, she moved to Europe and then to New York City, where she studied acting and continued her modeling career. She retired from acting after her son's birth in 1971.

In 2004, she returned to live in her childhood home in Westwood.

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John Hughey

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ― John Hughey, a steel guitar player who toured for years with country legend Conway Twitty and recorded with Elvis Presley and many other stars, has died. He was 73.

Hughey died Sunday, his publicist said. The Tennessean reported that he died of heart complications.

The Elaine, Ark., native was credited with developing a unique style of playing that focused on the instrument's high tones, resulting in a distinctive "crying sound."

He started playing professionally in the early 1950s with a Memphis-based band, Slim Rhodes and The Mother's Best Mountaineers, before playing for about 20 years with Twitty, who was a schoolmate of Hughey's when his family lived in Horn Lake, Miss.

Hughey later recorded songs with Presley, Loretta Lynn, Marty Stuart, Willie Nelson, Dickey Betts of The Allman Brothers and others. He recorded and toured with Vince Gill for about 12 years.

He still played live regularly with The Time Jumpers, a Western swing band composed of top Nashville session players.

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Samuel Leonard

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) ― Samuel Leonard, a Cornell University professor whose pioneering work in reproductive endocrinology in the 1930s led to development of the birth control pill, has died. He was 101.

Leonard died Nov. 12, the university announced.

Leonard was credited with the idea of using estrogen as a contraceptive. He prevented pregnancy in rats with the female sex hormone in a 1931 study, three decades before human birth control pills hit the market.

That same year, Leonard authored a paper reporting that the ovaries and testes were regulated by two pituitary gonadotropic hormones: the follicle-stimulating hormone and the luteinizing hormone. His discovery came at a time when hormones were just being discovered and there was debate over whether there were one or two gonadotropic hormones.

Leonard was born in Elizabeth, N.J. He earned his bachelor's degree from Rutgers University in 1927 and both his master's (1929) and doctoral (1931) degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

After working as a National Research Council Fellow at Columbia University and an assistant professor at Union College and Rutgers, Leonard joined the Cornell faculty in 1941. He became a full professor in 1949.

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Ellen Mueller-Preis

VIENNA, Austria (AP) ― Ellen Mueller-Preis, who won Olympic gold in fencing at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, has died. She was 95.

Mueller-Preis died Sunday of kidney failure in a Vienna hospital, according to the Austrian Olympic Committee.

Born in Berlin, Mueller-Preis moved to the Austrian capital in 1930. Two years later, she represented Austria at the 1932 Olympics and won the gold medal.

Mueller-Preis won bronze medals at the 1936 Berlin Games and the 1948 London Olympics. She also won fencing world titles in 1947, '49 and '50. In 1949, she was named Austrian female athlete of the year.

After retiring from competition, Mueller-Preis had a long career as a consultant to Vienna's prestigious Burgtheater, where she helped ensure that fencing performed in plays was properly done.

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Milo Radulovich

DETROIT (AP) ― Milo Radulovich, an Air Force Reserve lieutenant championed by CBS-TV newsman Edward R. Murrow when the military threatened to decommission him during a Cold War anti-communist crackdown, has died. He was 81.

Radulovich died Monday in Vallejo, Calif., after complications from a stroke, family members said. He was 81.

He served as a consultant on the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck," based on Murrow's journalistic challenge to U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The movie included the Radulovich case and the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings that led to the senator's downfall.

Radulovich was born in Detroit, joined the Air Force Reserves, worked as a meteorologist in Greenland, then enrolled at the University of Michigan on the GI Bill.

In 1953, the Air Force threatened to decommission him on grounds that he maintained a "close and continuing relationship" with his father and sister. The military said they were suspect because of the father's subscription to a Serbian newspaper and his sister's political activities.

Radulovich refused the military's demand that he denounce his father and sister.

"He was well aware of his historical importance," Al Fishman, husband of Radulovich's sister Margaret, told The Detroit News. "He put his finger in the dike when the flood of McCarthyism inundated the country."

"He was one of my heroes," Fishman told the Detroit Free Press.

Murrow's "See It Now" aired a segment, "The Case Against Lt. Milo Radulovich," in October 1953. The next month, the Air Force reversed its declaration that Radulovich was a security risk.

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Jim Ringo

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) ― Jim Ringo, a Hall of Fame center who played 15 seasons for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles, has died. He was 75.

Ringo died Monday after a short illness. His wife, Judy, said her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1996 and recently developed penumonia. She said the couple moved to Chesapeake, Va., about 10 years ago and that her husband lived at home for much of that time until moving to a treatment unit in Virginia Beach.

The Packers drafted Ringo out of Syracuse in the seventh round in 1953, and he became one of the league's best centers despite being undersized at just over 200 pounds.

But Ringo turned his relatively small size into an advantage, leading the way on the power sweep that made the Packers' offense so effective.

Ringo played for Green Bay through 1963, but a contract dispute led Ringo and coach Vince Lombardi to part ways. According to Packers folklore, Ringo had the audacity to bring an agent with him to negotiate a new contract ― and Lombardi traded him to Philadelphia on the spot.

Ringo played for the Eagles from 1964-67. He was voted to 10 Pro Bowls and was chosen for the NFL's All-Decade Team of the 1960s. He started in a then-record 182 consecutive games from 1954-67.

Ringo later went in to coaching. He replaced Buffalo Bills coach Lou Saban part of the way through the 1976 season, and the Bills lost their last nine games. He returned the following year, and the Bills went 3-11. Ringo was fired after the season and replaced by Chuck Knox.

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Dick Wilson

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― Dick Wilson, the character actor and pitchman who for 21 years played an uptight grocer begging customers "Please, don't squeeze the Charmin," has died. He was 91.

Wilson died Monday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his daughter Melanie Wilson, who appeared on the ABC sitcom "Perfect Strangers."

Wilson made more than 500 commercials as Mr. George Whipple, a man consumed with keeping bubbly housewives from fondling toilet paper. The punch line of most spots was that Whipple himself was a closeted squeezer.

The first commercial aired in 1964 and by the time the campaign ended in 1985 the tag line and Wilson, a former Canadian airman and vaudeville veteran, were pop culture touchstones.

During his run as Mr. Whipple, Wilson also performed on the dinner theater circuit, shot occasional standup comedy shows and worked on dozens of TV sitcoms. He played the drunk on several episodes of "Bewitched" and appeared as various characters on "Hogan's Heroes," "The Bob Newhart Show," and Walt Disney productions.

Born in England, Wilson moved to Canada as a child. His father starred in a vaudeville minstrel show and his mother was a singer. He served in the Canadian Air Force during World War II and became a U.S. citizen in 1954, he told the AP.
'Hogan's Heroes' Actress Valdis Dies
15 hours ago

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) ― The actress who played Col. Klink's sexy blond secretary Hilda on "Hogan's Heroes" and married the show's star, Bob Crane, has died. She was 72.

Patricia Crane died on Oct. 14, a spokeswoman for the Orange County coroner's office confirmed Monday. On stage, Crane was known as Sigrid Valdis.

Crane died of lung cancer at her daughter Ana Sarmiento's home, her son said.

"One of her last wishes in her will was that the funeral have no press, so we didn't contact the press (when she died), to honor her wishes," son Scotty Crane told the Los Angeles Times.

Crane played Hilda for five seasons on "Hogan's Heroes," the 1965-71 CBS situation comedy about Allied prisoners in a World War II German POW camp. Hilda and Bob Crane's Col. Hogan flirted playfully in front of the screen, but in 1970 were married for real ― on the show's set.

Eight years later, Crane was found bludgeoned to death in an apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Patricia Olson was born in 1935 in Bakersfield, Calif., and grew up in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, finding both runway and print modeling jobs as a teenager.

After graduating high school, she moved to Europe and then to New York City, where she studied acting and continued her modeling career.

Her film credits include "Our Man Flint," "Two Tickets to Paris," "Marriage on the Rocks," and "The Venetian Affair." In addition to "Hogan's Heroes," she appeared on other television series, including "The Wild Wild West" and "Kraft Mystery Theater."

She retired from acting after her son's birth in 1971. She moved from the Los Angeles area after Crane's death in 1978. In 1998, she joined the cast of her son's syndicated weekly sketch comedy radio show, "Shaken, Not Stirred," which originated in Seattle.

In 2004, she returned to live in her childhood home in Westwood.

In addition to her son and daughter from her marriage to Crane, the twice-widowed actress is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, Melissa Smith; and five grandchildren.
Bob Crane
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Robert Edward Crane (July 13, 1928 � June 29, 1978) was an American disc jockey and Emmy award-nominated actor, best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E. Hogan in the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes from 1965 to 1971, and for his violent and unsolved death.

Contents
1 Early life
2 Early career
3 Hogan's Heroes
4 Decline and fall
5 Biographical film
6 In Pop Culture
7 Filmography
8 See Also
9 References
10 External links



[edit] Early life
Crane was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. He dropped out of high school [1]in 1946 and became a drummer, performing with dance bands and a symphony orchestra. In 1949, he married high school sweetheart Anne Terzian; they eventually had three children, Deborah Ann, Karen Leslie, and Robert David (known as "Bob, Jr."). He later divorced and remarried, producing another son, Robert Scott Crane.


[edit] Early career
In 1950, Crane started his broadcasting career at WLEA in Hornell, New York, from which he quickly moved to WBIS in Bristol, Connecticut, followed by WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a 500-watt operation where he remained until 1956, when the CBS radio network plucked Crane out to help stop his huge popularity from affecting their own station's ratings. Crane moved his family to California to host the morning show at KNX in Hollywood. He filled the broadcast with sly wit, drumming, and guests such Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope. It quickly became the number-one rated morning show in the LA area, with Crane known as "The King of the Los Angeles Airwaves."

Crane's acting ambitions led to his subbing for Johnny Carson on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? and appearances on The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and General Electric Theater. When Carl Reiner appeared on his show, Crane persuaded him to book him for a guest shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show, where he was noticed by Donna Reed, who suggested him for the role of neighbor Dr. Dave Kelsey in her eponymous sitcom from 1963 through 1965.


[edit] Hogan's Heroes
In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a television comedy pilot about a German P.O.W. camp. Hogan's Heroes became a hit and finished in the Top Ten in its first year on the air. The series lasted six seasons, and Crane was nominated for an Emmy Award twice, in 1966 and 1967. During its run, he met Patricia Olsen who played Hilda under the stage name Sigrid Valdis. He divorced his wife of twenty years and married Olsen on the set of the show in 1970. They had a son, Scotty (Robert Scott), and adopted a daughter named Ana Marie.

Crane's drumming ability can be seen in the sixth season episode, "Look at the Pretty Snowflakes," where he has an extended drum solo during the prisoners' performance of the jazz standard "Cherokee".


[edit] Decline and fall
Following the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes in 1971, Crane continued to act, appearing in two Disney films and a number of TV shows, including Police Woman, Quincy, M.E., and The Love Boat. A second series of his own, 1975's The Bob Crane Show, was cancelled by NBC after three months.

During the run of Hogan's Heroes, Crane met John Henry Carpenter, an electronics expert who sold VCRs. Carpenter is alleged to have turned Crane onto a life of sex and pornographic movies made by the two. Although Crane's family contests this version of the story, it is a fact that Crane made home videotapes of numerous sexual orgies, using video technology supplied by Carpenter, with Carpenter often participating in the orgies. Crane is known to have made pornographic films as early as 1956.[citation needed]

On a late night in 1978, Crane allegedly called Carpenter to tell him that their friendship was over. The following day, Crane was discovered violently bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found (but was believed to be a camera tripod) at the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona. Crane had been appearing in Scottsdale in a production of a play titled Beginner's Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre.

According to an episode of A&E's Cold Case Files, police officers who arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment several times and didn't seem surprised that the police were there. This immediately raised suspicion, and the car Carpenter had rented the previous day was impounded by the police. In it several blood smears were found that matched Crane's blood type. At that time DNA testing didn't exist to confirm if it was Crane's or not. Due to a lack of sufficient evidence, the district attorney declined to file charges and the case went cold.

In 1992, fourteen years after the murder, the case was reopened. An attempt to test the blood found in the car Carpenter rented failed to produce any result due to improper preservation of the evidence. The detective in charge instead hoped a picture of what appeared to be a piece of unidentified material found in the rental car (the physical bit of unidentified material had been lost) would incriminate Carpenter. He was arrested and indicted. During Carpenter's trial in 1994, the prosecution showed a videotape of Crane and Carpenter engaging in sex with the same woman to demonstrate their close relationship. However, Carpenter was acquitted on a lack of convincing evidence. Both the murder and the motive remain officially unsolved. Carpenter maintained his innocence until his death on September 4, 1998.


[edit] Biographical film
Crane's life and murder were the subject of the 2002 film Auto Focus, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear as Crane. The film portrays Crane as a happily married, churchgoing family man and popular L.A. disc jockey who suddenly becomes a Hollywood celebrity, and just as rapidly becomes a sex addict, hanging out at strip clubs and participating in orgies. He documents his exploits on video tape, and is compelled by his addiction into ever more salacious excesses, which eventually crowd everything else out of his life: marriage, family, non-sexual friends, career.

Crane's second wife and their son Scotty objected to the way Crane was portrayed in the film, and took to the media to present their side of the story. Shortly before the film's release, Scotty also started the website www.bobcrane.com to provide documents and testimony that would contest the movie's version of his father's story. The website notably featured clips from a pornographic home film loop Bob Crane had made in 1956, before his meeting with Carpenter. (Scotty later removed the pornographic clips from the site.)

In an interview posted to the site, Scotty stated, "My father had been having extramarital affairs and photographing hundreds of nude women engaged in sexual activity since the 1940s. He did not suddenly become a 'sex addict' when he met my mother. We have amateur home erotic movies of his that date back to 1956, and I can assure you that the women in those movies were not his wife at the time. [...]

"My father did attend church -- when people died. He wasn't religious and he didn't raise me to be religious. The whole mythology about him being this church-going saint that was brought down and corrupted by the evils of Hollywood -- is really just a dramatic way to dress up a story. But it's totally untrue. He was an overly sexual person from an early age. In the twelve years that my mom knew him, he went to church three times: my baptism, his father's funeral and his own funeral. He never had a family priest for a 'buddy' as Auto Focus depicts".[1]

His last televised appearance was in the Canadian cooking show Celebrity Cooks.