"Rambo" Boss Richard Crenna Dies

E! - January 18, 2003

By Bridget Byrne

Richard Crenna, the handsome character actor perhaps best remembered for portraying Sylvester Stallone's commander in the Rambo trilogy, died from pancreatic cancer Friday at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 75.

"This came very sudden," his daughter Seana told the Associated Press.

Before being diagnosed with cancer, Crenna had surgery to remove his thyroid in 1997 after a malignancy was found. Despite his health woes, he had continued to work in the business that both admired and appreciated his talent, charm and good humor since he first attracted notice as lovelorn teen Walter Denton in the radio and television series Our Miss Brooks half a century ago.

Most recently Crenna had been appearing on CBS' Judging Amy in the recurring role of business man Jared Duff, suitor to Tyne Daly's Maxine Gray. An episode planned for the upcoming February sweeps was to have featured the couple getting married, but Crenna's illness prevented that storyline from being filmed.

While publicizing the 2001 Showtime movie The Day Reagan Was Shot, in which he played the President, Crenna told an interviewer that while he missed the "real camaraderie" of the old days of Hollywood and "the laughs we used to have," he had no intention of retiring. "I don't consider myself a dinosaur. I'm more of a cockroach. I'm never going to disappear. I intend to be around when everyone else is gone."

Born in downtown Los Angeles, where his parents ran a small hotel, Crenna was just a schoolboy when he was coopted along with a group of his friends to perform on a local radio show called Boy Scout Jamboree. That let to his casting in the late '40s as Denton on CBS radio.

He was able to sustain a youthful image for many years, continuing to portray the bumbling squeaky-voiced teen on television from 1952 to 1955, but eventually he was allowed to graduate to more mature parts. From 1957 to '63 he played Luke McCoy in the family comedy The Real McCoys and was then the star of the short-lived political drama Slattery's People, which earned him back-to-back Emmy nominations.

Crenna was a TV-movie fixture in the '70s and '80s, playing Detective Frank Janek in a series of teleflicks, beginning with 1985's Double Take. He won an Emmy for playing another cop, the title role in the 1985 TV drama The Rape of Richard Beck, a story of a policeman who's sexually assaulted.

Aside from racking up a long list of tube credits, Crenna starred in dozens of feature films. Among his memorable roles: the cuckolded husband in the sexy film noir Body Heat, the nouveau-riche dad in The Flamingo Kid, Steve McQueen's captain in The Sand Pebbles and one of the crooks terrorizing Audrey Hepburn in the thriller Wait Until Dark.

But his widest audience undoubtedly came from playing muscled mercenary John Rambo's boss, Green Beret and Vietnam vet Colonel Samuel Trautman, in First Blood, Rambo and Rambo III. He parodied that macho image (and simultaneously paid homage to his early career) by appearing as Colonel Denton Walters in the Charlie Sheen comedy Hot Shots! Part Deux.

He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Penni, son Richard Jr., daughters Seana and Maria and three grandchildren. The family is planning a public memorial service for January 25.


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