He began his radio career in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio and later worked at WPEN (now WKDN) in Philadelphia. In 1961, he became a popular and controversial host for the radio powerhouse KGO in San Francisco. With KGO's strong nighttime 50,000 Watt signal reaching as far north as Seattle, Washington, and as far south as Los Angeles, he attracted a regional audience in the West. Variety described him as "the popular, confrontational and sometimes controversial host of San Francisco's KGO. Helping to pioneer talk radio, he was outspoken and outraged some callers by hanging up on them."
A late-night program airing weekdays from 11pm to 2am, Crane at the hungry i (1962–63) found Crane interacting with owner and impresario Enrico Banducci and interviewing such talents as Barbra Streisand and Professor Irwin Corey.
In 1963, Crane moved to New York City to host Night Line, a 1:00 a.m. talk show on WABC-TV, the American Broadcasting Company's flagship station. The first American TV appearance of The Rolling Stones was on Crane's program in June 1964 when only New Yorkers could see it. The program debuted nationwide with a trial run (telecast nightly for two weeks) in August 1964 starting at 11:15 p.m. on the ABC schedule and titled The Les Crane Show. It was the first network program to compete with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Crane was married five times. The 1964 Look magazine profile includes a photograph of him with his wife Eve, maiden name King, on the lawn of their home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The text of the article says he is helping raise her three children from her previous marriage that had ended in divorce.
Immediately after the November 1965 cancellation of ABC's Nightlife, Crane tried acting, but his career was brief. He appeared in the unsuccessful film An American Dream (1966), which was based on the Norman Mailer novel, and made a few guest-star appearances on network television shows, including a 1966 appearance on the western series The Virginian.
Crane's fourth wife was Gilligan's Island cast member Tina Louise, whom he married in 1966 and divorced in 1971. Their only child together was Caprice (b. 1970), who became an author, Screenwriter and television Producer.
In 1968, Les Crane was back on the West Coast, hosting a radio talk show on KLAC in Los Angeles. Critics noted that in the style of the 1960s, he now dressed in a turtleneck and moccasins, sprinkling his speech with words like "groovy." ("Communicasters," 1968). However, he was still doing interviews with major newsmakers and discussing topics like civil disobedience, hippies and the rising popularity of meditation. (Sweeney, 1968) He also did some local TV talk. Crane left KLAC when the station switched to a country music format.
Les Crane and Tina Louise can be seen as actors in a joint appearance on a 1969 segment of Love American Style.
After Crane's final television appearance in the early 1970s, he refused to discuss his television career and did not respond to queries about any kinescopes he may have owned of his late-night ABC show from 1964.
In late 1971, the 45rpm recording of Crane's reading of Desiderata reached No. 8 on the Billboard charts. It became what one Writer called "a New Age anthem" and won him a Grammy.
In the 1980s, Crane transitioned to the software industry and became chairman of The Software Toolworks, creators of the three-dimensional color chess series, Chessmaster and the educational series Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Toolworks was also responsible for such games as The Original Adventure and the PC version of Pong. The company was sold and renamed Mindscape in the early 1990s.
Some sources say that Crane gave the rock group The Mamas & the Papas their name, but this is disputed in other sources, including John Phillips' 1986 memoir, which says he and Cass Elliot (both founding members of the group) came up with the name while they were watching a television news segment about the Hells Angels. (see Bronson, 2003)
Though Crane thought the poem was in the public domain when it was recorded, the rights belonged to the family of author Max Ehrmann, and royalties were distributed accordingly. When asked about the recording during an interview by the Los Angeles Times in 1987, Crane replied, "I can't Listen to it now without gagging."
Crane, along with KRLA general manager John Barrett, were the original people "responsible for creating the Top 40 (list of the most requested pop songs)," said Casey Kasem in a 1990 interview.
Crane died on July 13, 2008, in Greenbrae, California, north of San Francisco, at age 74. He had been living in nearby Belvedere, California with his wife, Ginger, at the time of his death.
