Crane by Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer Page B
Authors: Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer
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most prestigious role of his career—playing the Cary Grant role in an ABC television production of
Arsenic and Old Lace.
He worked with Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, David Wayne, and Fred Gwynne. The play was videotaped in front of a live audience in New York. It would be my dad’s only project outside of
Hogan’s
that had a distinctive level of quality. It also challenged my dad’s acting chops. He did a respectable job, but Cary Grant didn’t need to come out of retirement to defend his crown. Besides, no one watched the broadcast.
In 1969, what had been our little Tarzana family series was suddenly canceled. Life as my parents, sisters, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles knew it was not being renewed for another season. Dad would never live in our house again. My parents, those rocks of stability, always to be counted on, taken for granted even, just crumbled overnight. Mom and Dad. Together since high school. Married for twenty years. The pioneers who had traveled west in their Oldsmobile Conestoga, braving thedangers of midwestern food and sleeping rough in Travelodges and Holiday Inns, would never spend another night together. I was seventeen, my sisters eight and nine.
Debbie, Bob, Karen, and Bobby Crane, Tarzana, 1968 (author’s collection).
The change came like a tsunami—a warm, comfortable atmosphere one moment, and then in an instant I was underwater, looking for something to keep me afloat. Everything I knew, trusted, and counted on was drowned. Overnight Mom officially became a single parent. Dad was officially gone. Gone with another woman. As blame, anger, mistrust, and confusion permeated the household, I looked at my dad differently from that moment on.
Young people don’t like change; they rely on continuity. Still comfortably naïve, I was trying desperately to hold onto something that wasn’t there anymore. We had just had our small world rocked by an 8.2 earthquake, and there was no way to prep for the ensuing surge when you didn’t know what was coming. It was everyone for himself; just try to keep your head above the rising tide.
I thought what might help me stay afloat was a girlfriend. There withlifesaving water wings was a chipper, freckle-faced redhead who loved politics named Chris Klauser. She and I dutifully played our roles as boyfriend and girlfriend, going to school dances, skiing with her family, making out in my ’66 Ford Mustang, which Chris dubbed the White Horse. We would break up, get back together, and ultimately attend the senior prom arm in arm. These were all anxiety-producing, seemingly important moments. In the end, like most high school romances, our relationship wasn’t sustainable. There wasn’t enough life experience for it to feed off. There’s only so long that teenaged hormones can keep a thing alive, but this first serious relationship did serve as a rite of passage, a necessary road for me to take and invaluable life experience in the mysteries of bra hardware.
At the same time I was having profound conversations with Chris about Vietnam, civil rights, and international justice, I found I could also have a pleasant time with a nonpolitical girl named Pam Connell, who had long, dark hair and was two years younger than I, in the tenth grade when I was a senior. We met in photography class. Pam came from a broken home, which I could immediately relate to. She was living with her mother; her dad was gone. She liked Creedence Clearwater Revival. In a lot of ways I could connect with her much more easily than with Chris, who came from a highly educated family stocked with teachers, professors, and principals. In the Klauser household there was always talk of PhDs, theses, and graduate schools, all things that my family had never experienced. Ultimately, I felt I didn’t fit in with that family. The Cranes were a circus troupe, a carny family compared to the Klausers. We were freaks. Besides, Pam Connell’s bra was a snap to unhook.
The impact on my
Arsenic and Old Lace.
He worked with Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, David Wayne, and Fred Gwynne. The play was videotaped in front of a live audience in New York. It would be my dad’s only project outside of
Hogan’s
that had a distinctive level of quality. It also challenged my dad’s acting chops. He did a respectable job, but Cary Grant didn’t need to come out of retirement to defend his crown. Besides, no one watched the broadcast.
In 1969, what had been our little Tarzana family series was suddenly canceled. Life as my parents, sisters, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles knew it was not being renewed for another season. Dad would never live in our house again. My parents, those rocks of stability, always to be counted on, taken for granted even, just crumbled overnight. Mom and Dad. Together since high school. Married for twenty years. The pioneers who had traveled west in their Oldsmobile Conestoga, braving thedangers of midwestern food and sleeping rough in Travelodges and Holiday Inns, would never spend another night together. I was seventeen, my sisters eight and nine.
Debbie, Bob, Karen, and Bobby Crane, Tarzana, 1968 (author’s collection).
The change came like a tsunami—a warm, comfortable atmosphere one moment, and then in an instant I was underwater, looking for something to keep me afloat. Everything I knew, trusted, and counted on was drowned. Overnight Mom officially became a single parent. Dad was officially gone. Gone with another woman. As blame, anger, mistrust, and confusion permeated the household, I looked at my dad differently from that moment on.
Young people don’t like change; they rely on continuity. Still comfortably naïve, I was trying desperately to hold onto something that wasn’t there anymore. We had just had our small world rocked by an 8.2 earthquake, and there was no way to prep for the ensuing surge when you didn’t know what was coming. It was everyone for himself; just try to keep your head above the rising tide.
I thought what might help me stay afloat was a girlfriend. There withlifesaving water wings was a chipper, freckle-faced redhead who loved politics named Chris Klauser. She and I dutifully played our roles as boyfriend and girlfriend, going to school dances, skiing with her family, making out in my ’66 Ford Mustang, which Chris dubbed the White Horse. We would break up, get back together, and ultimately attend the senior prom arm in arm. These were all anxiety-producing, seemingly important moments. In the end, like most high school romances, our relationship wasn’t sustainable. There wasn’t enough life experience for it to feed off. There’s only so long that teenaged hormones can keep a thing alive, but this first serious relationship did serve as a rite of passage, a necessary road for me to take and invaluable life experience in the mysteries of bra hardware.
At the same time I was having profound conversations with Chris about Vietnam, civil rights, and international justice, I found I could also have a pleasant time with a nonpolitical girl named Pam Connell, who had long, dark hair and was two years younger than I, in the tenth grade when I was a senior. We met in photography class. Pam came from a broken home, which I could immediately relate to. She was living with her mother; her dad was gone. She liked Creedence Clearwater Revival. In a lot of ways I could connect with her much more easily than with Chris, who came from a highly educated family stocked with teachers, professors, and principals. In the Klauser household there was always talk of PhDs, theses, and graduate schools, all things that my family had never experienced. Ultimately, I felt I didn’t fit in with that family. The Cranes were a circus troupe, a carny family compared to the Klausers. We were freaks. Besides, Pam Connell’s bra was a snap to unhook.
The impact on my
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