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July 19, 2008

Historical Perspective: Radio, TV personality Les Crane and other matters

By Mike McCormick

Les Crane, the radio and television personality who first challenged Johnny Carson’s claim to the late night television throne, died last Sunday in Greenbrae, Calif.

He was 74 years old.

A disc jockey at KGO Radio in San Francisco in the early 1960s, Crane attracted listeners with provocative interviews of celebrities like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and rising young stars Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand.

Immense popularity at the local level landed Crane a job as host of a late night television show at WABC in New York in September 1963. Almost immediately, he engendered controversy by luring Alabama Gov. George Wallace as a guest.

“The Les Crane Show” won an Emmy as the “best talk show” as the result of its timely interviews of Richard Burton, Shelley Winters, Melvin Belli, Malcolm X, Mario Savio, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, the Rolling Stones and Marguerite Frances Claverie, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald.

In November 1964, ABC pitted Crane against NBC’s “Tonight” show, hosted by Carson, who had replaced Jack Paar two years earlier. Though he provided the first nationally televised interview with singer-composer Bob Dylan, Crane was unable to unseat Carson. His show lasted only a few months.

Crane’s link with Terre Haute was secured in 1971 when he recorded Max Ehrmann’s inspirational poem, “Desiderata.” It won a Grammy for “best spoken word recording.”

Crane’s resonant voice and classic delivery, backed by music composed by Fred Werner’s Orchestra and a gospel-soul chorus, was tailor-made for success. The presentation zoomed to No. 8 on Billboard’s popularity chart and was recorded in several languages.

The “Desiderata” album also did well, reaching No. 32 on the American charts.

When “Desiderata” was recorded, Crane and his advisers believed the poem was in the public domain though Ehrmann’s authorship was boldly asserted soon after a copy of the poem — published by a pastor of Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore — was found at the bedside of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson when he died in 1965.

Initially it was claimed that the poem was written by an anonymous author in 1692, the date Old St. Paul’s Church was established.

Written in 1906, “Desiderata” was copyrighted as “Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste,” in 1927. Widow Bertha Pratt King Ehrmann renewed it in the late 1940s. Royalties from “Desiderata” recordings had to be paid to Ehrmann’s heirs.

Crane took his talents to another discipline, serving as chairman of the board of Software Toolworks which designed the successful computer game Chessmaster 2000.

• Soon after bank and former railroad William Riley McKeen died on Feb. 18, 1913, “The Saturday Spectator” — edited and published by Don M. Nixon — noted that “considerable attention has been drawn” to the relative fortunes of Terre Haute residents.

“There are nine people in Terre Haute who are supposed to be millionaires,” Nixon wrote 95 years ago when that term had considerable meaning.

“Of these Crawford Fairbanks, whose fortune has been estimated by conservative men who would know as between six and seven million, is supposed to stand first. Over the state he is considered erroneously as being worth 30 million.

“Herman Hulman is said to be worth about three and a half million. He has given a great deal of money to charity, and is said to have a $600,000 bequest to St. Anthony’s Hospital in his will.

“Demas Deming (Jr.) has property valued at about two and a half million, it is said. Charles Minshall is worth about $1,500,000. His sister, Miss Helen Minshall, is worth about $1,000,000.”

Four other Vigo County residents were rated by bankers as being worth a million or more. They were distiller Fred B. Smith, wholesale grocer William S. Rea, former brewer Anton Mayer and Sophie Wheeler, daughter of Demas and Sarah Deming and sister of Demas Deming, Jr.

Nixon also noted that three estates valued at over one million dollars had been probated through Vigo County courts during the early 20th Century, those of iron master Andrew J. Crawford, coal baron J. Smith Talley and McKeen.

• Serving his second term as president of the Indiana Building and Loan League, Indiana State Normal professor Howard Sandison issued an annual report in early 1913 placing Vigo County’s building and loan companies second in size in Indiana.

Marion County, with $9,313,120 in assets, was listed first in Indiana. Vigo County was next with $7,133,918 in assets.

As of Dec. 31, 1912, four Terre Haute savings and loan companies ranked among the state’s top ten. Of those headquarters in the city, Wabash Savings Loan & Building Association was fourth with $1,428,782; Indiana Savings Loan & Building Association was fifth with $1,281,360; Fort Harrison Savings Association was sixth with $1,112, 937; and Terre Haute Home & Savings Association was seventh with $868,560.

After the first of the year (1913), Indiana Savings Loan & Building Association acquired Terre Haute Home & Savings Association and the merger catapulted Indiana Savings Loan & Building Association into second place in the state behind only Railroad Building & Loan Association of Indianapolis.

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