Bob Crane can drum almost as well as he can videotape his own sexual exploits

As a drummer, a broadcaster, an actor and an amateur sex videographer,

it’s safe to say that Bob Crane, the titular star of Hogan’s

Heroes, and also the star of multiple ho-made amateur porn

productions and his very own mysterious murder, was

a true renaissance man of the arts and of being mysteriously murdered.

Your mom says you should have that much on your

curriculum vitae or whatever.

You probably know his whole crazy story: The public trajectory of his

career in the entertainment business from morning show DJ to sitcom

star, and his concordant obsessive descent into what we’d now call sex

addiction, and his compulsive need to tape himself with his partners.

The weirdness of his private life retroactively taints his career

legacy. Via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, here is an awesomely weird old

film of a tuxedoed Bob Crane wailing on the skins while four go-go

dancers flash their legs and sing about Bob Crane’s awesomeness to the

tune of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” which we can’t help

thinking would be less weird if it were anybody besides Bob Crane.

Jerry Van Dyke, for instance.

A few short years later, Crane would be talking into a coffee pot and palling around secret tunnels with a multinational group of allied soldiers while outwitting the German knuckleheads of Stalag 13.

And a few short years after that, his life would come to a tragic and

mysterious end. Then Greg Kinnear played him Auto

Focus. The end.