Crane (48 page)

The sale was scheduled for Tuesday, June 23, 2009, six days shy of the thirty-first anniversary of my dad’s murder. As Leslie and I entered the cool marble foyer of Christie’s, the lack of hubbub and excitement struck me as odd. I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not the hushed atmosphere of a catacomb.

We made our way upstairs to the preview rooms where the items for sale were on display: some, like an autographed Beatles’
Sgt. Pepper
souvenir poster, framed and on the wall—my friends beaming down on me, forever young in their psychedelic regalia—and others, like a handwritten poem by young Bobby Zimmerman before he became Dylan, in glass cases smudged with fingerprints. The merchandise ran the gamut: from a
Never Mind the Bollocks
album signed by Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, and the other Sex Pistols to Marlon Brando’s personal script of
The Godfather
to Kurt Cobain’s bass guitar from Sears to Harry Houdini’s locking iron handcuffs (with keys). There were film posters, concert bills, souvenirs, and clothing—hundreds of items on the walls, in the cases, and displayed on mannequins—including the shirt and jacket worn by my dad for six years as Colonel Robert E. Hogan.

Standing in front of the headless torso, I could already feel the tug on my heart lessening. Just seeing the jacket in this room made the connection between that brown leather and me more tenuous. I was pretty sure I was making the right decision, provided, of course, someone actually bid real money for it. The estimate on the card describing the two pieces was $15,000–$20,000, and standing there in that room, surrounded by what some might consider merchandise from a Woodstock garage sale, I started to have doubts. Would that jacket mean anything to anyone but me? Was
Hogan’s Heroes
still even in the public consciousness? What if no one bid on it? My nerves ratcheted up a few notches. It wasn’t the money that mattered to me; it was the idea that interest in the jacket would be a validation of my dad’s career, his personality—indeed, his very existence. If some unknown person was willing to plunk down cold hard cash to own a piece of my dad, then it was as though he was still out there, still entertaining with his quick wit and mischievous smile. Then I thought maybe the appeal of the jacket would have more to do with his gruesome exit, a souvenir from a horror show, a ghoulish relic. It might be like owning a German luger or the deck of cards Wild Bill Hickok was using when he was shot in the back. I needed a drink.

The lots were brought onstage in the main auditorium one at a time. There was seating for a couple hundred in rows of high school assembly chairs, but there were fewer than fifty people in attendance, and only a fraction of those actually wielded the green and white paddles used in the bidding. The auctioneer stood at a podium, to her left a table staffed with employees working on computers and handling the phones.

The items came and went with a crack of the auctioneer’s gavel; some brought more than their estimates, some did not. Having never been to one of these shindigs before, I had no way to judge how it was going. As the lots fell away, I became more and more nervous. I couldn’t sit, so I paced in the back of the room. The lads from Liverpool were carried in, and the bidding became quite spirited. Paddles were raised in the room, and the auctioneer monitored the almost imperceptible signals from her colleagues online and on the phone. When the gavel finally came down, the poster had sold for $52,000. Shortly afterward, Kurt Cobain’s Sears-Roebuck special sold for nearly $45,000. A few other lots were hammered down, and then a small mannequin was rolled onstage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer intoned, “this next unique item is actually six items. The lot is comprised of a shirt, trousers, shoes, belt, glasses, and leather jacket all worn by the actor Peter Dinklage* in the film
Death at a Funeral.
Let’s open the bidding at $500.”

The silence in the room took me back to junior high school when my algebra teacher, Mr. Brashears, asked who’d like to solve a particularly difficult problem on the board.

“How about $250,” the teacher, er, auctioneer said jovially. “This is a beautifully made ensemble.”

I thought of Ben Stein in
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
saying, “Anyone? Anyone?”

“One hundred. Who’ll start at $100?”

People began looking around the room.

“Fifty? Can we begin at $50?” There was now a trace of pleading in her voice. “The leather alone is worth at least that.”

A ripple of giggling went through the room. “Twenty-five,” said a fellow in the front of the room. It was a mercy bid.

“Thank you,” said the auctioneer, relieved, but with renewed energy. “I’ve got $25. Who’ll say fifty? $50, I’ve got twenty-five; can I get fifty?”

Crickets, as they say in showbiz.

“Thirty-five?” she cajoled. “Can I get thirty-five?”

The silence was terrifying, broken by the gavel’s shotgun crack. “Sold. $25. Congratulations.”

The man in the front raised his numbered paddle. Did he get an unreal bargain, I wondered, or would that outfit end up in the children’s section at the Goodwill store?

“Jesus,” I said to Leslie, “what if that happens to my dad?” I was sweating. “I gotta take a walk.”

I left the reliquary and went to the men’s room to splash some water on my face. Returning to the sale, I heard the gavel banged down on a sealed copy of the Beatles’
Butcher
album. “Sold for $40,000. Thank you.”

The
Butcher
album was the original
Yesterday and Today
cover, with the Beatles posed in butcher’s coats, covered with raw meat and dismembered dolls. It caused such an outrage that it was pulled from record store shelves and given a new, less incendiary look. I remember my friend and bandmate Dave Arnoff steam ironing off the new cover of his
Yesterday and Today
album to expose the original butcher version underneath. His cost less than five bucks.

More items came and went. I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought again about how I feel about relics left behind by loved ones. My dad made that jacket live, just as Sinatra had before him and Kinnear after him. Without them in it, it was just so much cowhide to me. It was the same with Kari’s things, or any of the items from John Candy that I’d received over the years. My heart longed for the people, not their props.

As I thought my big thoughts, Lot 182 was brought in. “Ladies and gentlemen, this next very special item consists of a khaki shirt and leather jacket. The jacket has military insignias and ‘Colonel Robert E. Hogan’ stenciled on the breast. This ensemble was worn by actor Bob Crane on the hit TV show
Hogan’s Heroes.
Who will start the bidding at $5,000?”

I rubbed my fingers against one another. They were a little clammy. There was a terribly long silence. I thought, “Shit, what if he doesn’t even get $25?”

“Thank you, five thousand. Do I hear six?” said the auctioneer. “Six, I have six—seven, yes, in the front. Do I hear eight?” There was a nod from the table on the right. “I have eight on the phone; do I hear—yes, nine on the left, ten, thank you.”

On it went for several minutes, and then the bidding stalled. The digital money meter on the wall read 22,500. Well, at least it made the estimate, I thought.

“Twenty-two thousand, five hundred once,” said the auctioneer, “twenty-two—twenty three.”

A paddle went up. “Twenty-four, here on the left.”

A nod, a paddle, and in a couple of minutes the gavel came down once more like a cannon report. “Sold. $32,000.”

I took my first breath in several minutes. With the buyer’s premium that Christie’s tacks on, it turned out my dad was worth forty grand to someone. At that instant I was quite proud of him, and moved that somebody somewhere remembered him fondly enough to blow what is a good year’s pay for a lot of people.

In the end, my dad’s jacket was the fourth-highest-selling item in the sale. I was relieved and happy, and damn glad it brought more than the Peter Dinklage model. That three-hour auction represented 286 lots and hundreds of thousands of dollars in receipts for Christie’s and its consignors. I was moved by the response to Hogan’s jacket, and particularly glad it was sold in the company of the Beatles, Dylan, Brando, and Cobain. For a guy who ate at Du-Par’s in the San Fernando Valley, my dad was post-humously sharing a table at the Four Seasons with some of the greats.

Leslie and I were buoyant as we walked out the front entrance of Christie’s onto West Forty-ninth Street. With the bright sun on my face, I squinted up at NBC’s studios in Rockefeller Plaza. This was, or had been, home to
Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock
, the Fallon, O’Brien, and Letterman late-night programs as well as the original late-night show,
The Tonight Show
, which had featured Hogan’s own heroes—Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson.

The
Hogan’s Heroes
jacket symbolized the pinnacle of my dad’s career. But I wondered, standing there in front of that iconic edifice: what if contract renegotiations between NBC and Johnny Carson had broken down those many years ago, and my dad’s three-night stint as guest host during Johnny’s “sick-out” had turned into a permanent gig? “Heeeere’s Bob!” Then what if my family had returned to the East Coast? I would never have known and loved Chuck, Diane, Kari, and Leslie. That thought immediately triggered a tug on my heart. Would I have spent all those years in John Candy’s world? What if my dad had not been stung by the acting bug after watching Jack Lemmon and Gig Young? What if he had stayed with radio? He shared the same trail as his idols, if only bringing up the rear, but he kept moving toward a spot on the horizon that only he could see.

As I studied the building in front of me, I thought of my dad doing his work, living his life on his own terms. As I understand him now, he
never really committed to his wives, his children, or his friends. Some souls have a mentor or guide, but my dad never trusted anyone but himself. He got to spend three nights in this building before Carson “got better” and returned to work. My dad went back to the narrowing trail that led past the glory of NBC Rockefeller Center, past
Hogan’s Heroes,
and ended in a dark, squalid apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I looked at Leslie. I didn’t tell her what I was thinking. The auction had been a great success, an exciting event at a place I would probably never visit again. And it was all because of my dad. I looked up at the patch of cloudless blue between the skyscrapers and thanked him in my own quiet way for giving me this moment with Leslie in New York City on a beautiful afternoon. We strolled down the street to the sidewalk café at the Morrell Wine Bar, where we took a table in the sunshine and clinked our glasses together.

“Here’s to Colonel Hogan.”

*Peter Dinklage, the diminutive actor from
The Station Agent, The Chronicles of Narnia,
and
Nip/Tuck,
has since become something of a cult hero based on his role as Tyrion Lannister in HBO’s
Game of Thrones.

A huge thank-you to author/editor Patrick McGilligan; the gracious and talented leader of the UPK pack, Anne Dean Dotson; and her equally talented colleagues Bailey Johnson, Amy Harris, David Cobb, Cameron Ludwick, Blair Thomas, and Mack McCormick for all their dedicated efforts; the 20/20 vision of copyeditor Robin DuBlanc; Wilbur Hanson; Bill Jones; John Cerney; Joe Coyle; Grace Kono-Wells; Niki Dantine; Leslie Bockian; Jill Cartter; and the queen of Colbath, Ona Harris.

And to Chris, thank you for traveling the long and winding road with me.

R.C.

Thanks, of course, to all those diligent and professional folks at UPK mentioned above. It’s been a pleasure working with all of you. Thanks, too, to the sage Henry Morrison, to the prince of pixels, Nick Harris, and to Professor Rhonda Shary for her careful and insightful reading of early drafts of this book.

To Desly, beautiful and steadfast girl of mine, thanks for putting up with me, lo, these forty years.

I also have to thank Bob, my best friend and confidant since we thought we were secret agents in the seventh grade. It’s been both an unalloyed joy and a tear-spattered heartbreak of a journey. Thanks for taking me along, not just the first time, but this go-round as well. As we’ve said many times, “Life’s the strangest thing we’ve ever done.”

C.F.

Appendix A

Carpenter:
Are there many single people in show business?

Crane:
Yeah, there are a lot of single people, a lot of single actresses and actors. Being in show business you never really think of the person’s home life, whether they are married or single.

In my particular case, I’m talking as a person now who’s been married for 20 years and suddenly finds himself so-called single. It really hasn’t changed much in my own way of life. In the business where you’re on the set from 7:30 in the morning say until 7:30, 8 o’clock at night, you’re basically living a single existence anyway.