Archie R. McCardell, 81, who headed International Harvester during a pivotal 172-day labor strike in 1979, died Friday in Casper, said his daughter, Laurie McCardell.
McCardell joined Chicago-based International Harvester as president in 1977 and became chief executive a few months later. International Harvester posted record earnings of nearly $400 million in 1979 but began struggling when 35,000 employees represented by the United Auto Workers walked out Nov. 1 of that year. A settlement wasn’t reached until April 1980.
International Harvester lost millions during the strike. McCardell resigned in May 1982.
Les Crane, 74, called the “bad boy of late-night television” when he vied for ratings against talk-show king Johnny Carson in the mid-1960s, died Sunday at Marin General Hospital north of San Francisco.
Crane was host of a popular radio call-in show in San Francisco in 1964 when ABC tapped him for “The Les Crane Show.” Both serious and witty, it was touted as combining the approaches of Jack Paar, Mike Wallace and David Susskind, and featured conversations with major news figures such as Malcolm X and George Wallace, as well as lighter chitchat with movie stars.
The show fizzled, but in 1984 Crane founded a software company that made him a multimillionaire, largely from the sales of the game “Chessmaster” and a typing tutorial called “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.”
