Rod Serling's Night Gallery: 'House—With Ghost'

Night Gallery painting for
"House—With Ghost"

Nearly everyone I know likes a good ghost story (some more than others!). This is particularly true in the month of October as we build up to the scariest night of the year, Halloween. During this time, our fears of the unknown are heightened, and we're more acutely aware of things that might go bump in the night.

People are naturally intrigued about the Afterlife. What happens to us when we die? Do our souls live on in another dimension? Do some spirits hang around to either help or torment the living? Do ghosts really exist? We may not have the answers to such questions, but Hollywood certainly provides us with scores of chilling entertainment to feed our morbid curiosity.

Rod Serling successfully explored the supernatural and other elements of horror throughout his career, and his Night Gallery series (1969-1973) continues to send shivers down the spines of millions. Each painting on display in the Night Gallery has a tale of terror to share, and separately, these pieces of art correspond with their own segment in every episode. (Check out the paintings for yourself here.)

On November 17, 1971, Bob Crane guest-starred in the first segment of a Night Gallery episode: "House—With Ghost." In this segment, Bob played Ellis Travers, who is unhappily married to his wife Iris (Jo Anne Worley) and living in London. It just so happens that Iris has a peculiar hobby: conducting seances during dinner parties and playing with Ouija Boards in the hopes of making contact with restless spirits. This gives Ellis an idea. 

With the help of Mr. Chichester (Eric Christmas), a local historian and realtor of sorts, Ellis decides to find a house in the English countryside, and to please his wife, he wants one that is haunted. After describing to her what he considers the perfect house, Iris is convinced. They soon move out of their apartment and settle into their new home.

Ellis Travers (Bob Crane) comforts his wife, Iris (Jo Anne Worley),
after she is frightened by a menacing spirit.

But Ellis has more on his mind than just owning a haunted house. He's staging an elaborate plan, where Iris will eventually appear to become besieged by an unfriendly ghost, and after losing her mind and then her balance, will fall down the spiral staircase to her death. With Iris out of the way, Ellis will be free to move in with Sherry (Trisha Noble), a woman with whom he is having an affair. 

As Ellis hoped, they are not alone in their new house, and their ghost—Mr. Canby (Bernard Fox)—soon makes his presence known. And over time, his paranormal activities become increasingly more harrowing.

Ellis Travers (Bob Crane) feigns sadness after receiving bad news
from his wife's doctor (Alan Napier).

As part of his scheme, Ellis also talks to a doctor (Alan Napier) and asks him to examine Iris. But the doctor brings bad news: Iris has a rare medical condition and doesn't have long to live. Ellis, however, feels better than ever about his wife's impending demise. Now he doesn't need the unsettled spirit of Mr. Canby to do the dastardly deed for him; he can let nature take its course.

Mr. Canby has other ideas. He continues to torment Iris, eventually pushing her down the staircase to her death. Angry, Ellis confronts Mr. Canby, claiming he had changed his mind because she would have died of natural causes soon anyway. Mr. Canby is unaffected, and he presents Ellis with a bill for services rendered. For the rest of his life, Ellis must pay Mr. Canby's still-very-much-alive mistress a hefty sum to keep her happy—or else.

The ghost of Mr. Canby (Bernard Fox) presents Ellis Travers
(Bob Crane) a bill for services rendered.

I enjoy this episode for many reasons. First, I am one of those people who loves the Fall season, Halloween, and all the frightful festivities and entertainment that go along with it. And of course, that includes a good ghost story! Bob Crane also enjoyed Halloween, and each year, when his kids were little, he took them Trick or Treating around the neighborhood.

I also love that Bernard Fox costars with Bob in this episode. These two actors and friends worked alongside each other often. Fans of Hogan's Heroes know Bernard Fox as Royal Air Force Colonel Rodney Crittendon, one of the few who kept Hogan off balance. What a lot of people don't know, however, is that throughout the 1970s, Bernard Fox worked with Bob on stage in many productions of Beginner's Luck (they both starred in its initial 1970 run in Chicago), and the pair received rave reviews in the press for their theatre performances. Bernard Fox genuinely liked "old Bob," as he called him, and was greatly saddened by the news of Bob's death.

Bob Crane with Bernard Fox in
Beginner's Luck.

This episode of Night Gallery is also one of Bob's first performances following the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes, which ended after six seasons on April 4, 1971. Originally scheduled to go one more season, Hogan's Heroes fell victim to what became known as the Rural Purge—a sweep of series cancellations by networks to clear the way for television shows that dealt with modern issues rather than just provide light humor.

In my opinion, Bob played Ellis Travers, who is a despicable character, quite well. This episode of Night Gallery marks the start of Bob's decision to play characters that were out of his comfort zone (those that were not comedy roles). Bob often appeared as the villain when guest-starring on various series, including Police Woman, Ellery Queen, and Gibbsville, to name a few, and this was a far cry from the United States Army Air Force hero for which he was best known. But most could only view Bob as Hogan—and nothing else. Many years would pass before directors, critics, and the public would begin to see beyond his Colonel Hogan persona and accept Bob as a versatile actor. His role on The Love Boat in January 1978 may be his best dramatic performance. However, his murder a few months later cast an eerie shadow over his Love Boat performance, and as a result, he does not receive the proper credit he rightfully deserves.

It's worth taking a second look at Bob Crane's acting roles post-Hogan's Heroes and viewing his performances with an open mind, minus the stigma of June 29, 1978, and the media blitz that followed. Rod Serling's Night Gallery: "House—With Ghost" is a great place to start!

This post is part of the Terror TV Blogathon hosted by the Classic TV Blog Association.
Click the image above for more fabulous entries in this blogathon.

Rod Serling Hated 'Hogan's Heroes' — And That's Okay!

My mother hates Hogan's Heroes.

Yes, that's right. The woman who gave birth to the author who would one day write and publish a 660-page tome about the show's star despises the series that gave the world Colonel Hogan and made Bob Crane an international celebrity. Yikes!

My mom and I have a healthy, loving, mother-daughter relationship. She is the backbone of the entire family, and she supports my sister and me in all we do. She also likes Bob Crane as a radio personality and as an actor in general. And through the work of her rather determined and somewhat tenacious daughter, she has come to understand Bob Crane on a truer, more human level.

But Mom just never liked Hogan's Heroes. And for that matter, she never liked M*A*S*H or Doctor Who, but she can binge-watch NCIS and the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movies like it's nobody's business.

And so it goes. We all like and dislike certain things in the world. That's what makes us unique. If we want people to respect us for what we like, then the opposite must hold true. And if we dislike a certain television show or movie, it does not necessarily mean we hate the actors appearing in it. In most instances, we just don't care for the plot.

Recently, a Twitter discussion ensued about Rod Serling, the creative genius behind The Twilight Zone, and his abhorrence of Hogan's Heroes. His disgust of the series was so profound that his daughter, Anne Serling, felt compelled to include it in her highly acclaimed memoir, As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling.

Serling's daughter doesn't hold back when she talks about her father's hatred of Hogan, Klink, and Schultz, and their World War II German POW camp antics. She writes:

One program, though, that we are never allowed to watch is Hogan's Heroes, about a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. My father has a particular abhorrence of this show and no tolerance for how it perversely twists what happened in Nazi prison camps into something remotely comical. Years later, in a speech at the Library of Congress in Washington, it is clearly still on his mind.

'You take a show like Hogan's Heroes. Now, here you have a weekly, mirth-filled half hour that shows what a swinging ball it must have been in a Nazi POW camp. Now, there's a slight deviation from the norm in that there are good guys on this show; certainly, but there are no bad guys, at least not in the sense that we're used to recognizing our enemies as they appeared in old Warner Brothers films... 

'Now through the good offices of Hogan's Heroes, we meet the new post-war version of the wartime Nazi: a thick, bumbling fathead whose crime, singularly, is stupidity—nothing more. He's kind of a lovable, affable, benign Herman Goering. Now this may appeal to some students of comedy who refuse to let history get in the way of their laughter. But what it does to history is to distort, and what it does to a recollection of horror that is an ugly matter of record is absolutely inexcusable. Satire is one thing, because it bleeds, and it comments as it evokes laughter. But a rank diminishment of what was once an era of appalling human suffering, I don't believe, is proper material for comedy.'

He goes on to suggest that the success of Hogan's Heroes could lead to The Merry Men of Auschwitz, or Milton Berle in a new musical version of the Death March on Bataan, or a singular shot spectacular, The Wit and Wisdom of Adolph Hitler (pp. 133-134).

There is little doubt that Rod Serling loathed Hogan's Heroes. His words are harsh, and they cut to the quick. Any fan of Hogan's Heroes (and I'm one of them!) would leap to the show's defense. Robert Clary, who is Jewish, spent two years in concentration camps and lost many of his family members to the Nazis. Yet he wasn't offended by Hogan's Heroes and enjoyed portraying his character Corporal Louis LeBeau. Other series stars who were Jewish (or of Jewish heritage) include Werner Klemperer, John Banner, Leon Askin, and Howard Caine. Cynthia Lynn and her mother and grandmother survived German-occupied Latvia. John Banner is quoted as saying Schultz is, in fact, not stupid: "Notice that he survives." And Werner Klemperer agreed to play the role of Colonel Klink only if Klink were always made out to be the fool.

Bob Crane's brother almost died serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II (he was badly injured), so before Bob even considered signing the contract to play Colonel Hogan, he insisted that the producers show veterans and former POWs an early trailer to be sure they were not offended by the series. They loved it, saying without humor, they never would have made it through the war. Bob also spent a great deal of time defending the plot of Hogan's Heroes, saying it was not about making the Germans look foolish. Klink and Schultz are the buffoons, but the Nazis that visited the camp from Berlin had to be convincing as bad guys. He also defined it as a show that was a mock of authority, and according to his fan mail, people loved it when he gave it to Klink because they could relate: it was like giving it to the boss.

For Bob Crane: The Definitive Biography, Hogan's Heroes director Robert Butler explained to Linda Groundwater and me that the backdrop of war was a crucial element in the success of a show. It just "works." The drama is heightened because any one of the good guys could "get drilled" at any time. He said you do "moments," where the viewer is given a taste of that wartime tension before the comic relief. 

An example of one of those "moments" comes from a fan favorite, "Will the Real Adolph Please Stand Up," where Sergeant Andrew Carter (Larry Hovis) impersonates Hitler for the first time (and really convincingly, I might add!). Carter stumbles onto his uncanny ability to impersonate Hitler rather innocently, and he makes the mistake of doing his Adolph schtick in front of his commanding officer, Colonel Hogan. And Hogan really lets him have it. 

This is what separates silly nonsense from smart comedy. Realism. There is no way Stalag 13 could have existed in real life, but the tension of war did. And Bob Crane and his fellow cast members capture that tension regularly throughout the run of the series. Hogan's Heroes was not allowed to grow, however, in the same way that M*A*S*H eventually did. It always stayed in the same formula week after week, and part of that is the era in which it was produced. 

But I can talk until I'm blue in the face. There will always be those people who just don't like Hogan's Heroes. They, including my Mom and Rod Serling, can't get past the horrors of war and the atrocities caused by the Nazis.

And that's okay.

In fact, it's more than okay. To each his own. What would we talk about if we were all exactly the same and liked all the same things?

All of this aside, what should not be confused is how Rod Serling felt about Bob Crane. Just because Serling hated Hogan's Heroes does not mean he hated Bob. He held absolutely no personal animosity toward Bob despite his utter dislike of Bob's star vehicle.

The truth is—Rod Serling did like Bob Crane. He simply disliked a television series. It could have been anybody in the title role of Colonel Hogan. Serling would have hated the series just the same. While it's a safe bet that Serling would have preferred it if Bob had declined the role of Hogan, his hatred of Hogan's Heroes was not a personal attack on his friend and colleague.

Bob Crane and Rod Serling enjoyed a long professional relationship over the years. Serling was a frequent guest on Bob's KNX radio program. Ironically, in the clip below (which aired live on December 11, 1961), they discuss those people who hate The Twilight Zone (in this case, the episode "The Shelter") and those who write compulsively to Serling to tell him about it. Serling's response is to quote the 1st Amendment, stating that there should be no abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Regarding his hate mail, Serling says, "I'm delighted. Let them write anything they want. I don't think we're in trouble in this country if we let people say, talk, think, comment. This isn't our problem. It's when we start to abridge that."

In November 1960, Bob got his first major break in television. Rod Serling hired him to play the uncredited radio announcer in The Twilight Zone episode, "Static." Bob was known as radio's Man of 1,000 Voices, and he performs all of the voices heard on the radio in this episode. The episode taped on November 20, 1960, and Bob was paid $155.00 for his voice over work "of more than five lines" in the episode. "Static" aired on March 10, 1961.

During Bob's post-Hogan's Heroes days, Serling hired Bob to perform several times in his Zero Hour radio mystery series. And Bob also guest-starred on Serling's television series Night Gallery in the episode "House with Ghost" (also with co-star and friend Bernard Fox). Further, Bob's daughter, Karen Crane, grew up with Anne Serling, and the two remain friends to this day.

When all is said and done, Rod Serling simply didn't like Hogan's Heroes and wanted to let people know. He expressed himself constructively and without personally attacking any one individual, from Bob Crane to anyone connected with the series. I see Hogan's Heroes differently, as did Bob and many others. But I respect Serling's feelings and those of others who dislike the very program that I describe as brilliant and one of my all-time favorites. 

It's not the the end of the world if we are different from one another and have varying opinions. That's what makes life fun! We're only in trouble if, as Serling states, we start to abridge that diversity.