Hogan's Heroes aired from September 1965 until July 1971 on CBS.
Hogan's Heroes set out to prove that in the world of televised sitcoms, life in a Nazi POW camp during World War II could be funny.
Commandant of the camp was the incompetent, monocled Col. Klink ( Werner Klemperer),and guarding Stalag 13, where the American-led resistance forces were housed, was the equally inept Sgt. Schultz ( John Banner). Under the direction of Col. Robert Hogan ( Bob Crane), the prisoners were actually in complete control of the camp. The cast of regulars included Robert Clary as Cpl.. Louis LeBeau, a French Prisoner; Richard Dawson as Cpl. Peter Newkirk, a British Prisoner; Ivan Dixon as Cpl. James Kinchloe; Larry Hovis as Sgt. Andrew Carter; Kenneth Washington as Cpl. Richard Baker who replaced Kinchloe; Cynthia Lynn as Klink's secretary Helga, and Sigrid Valdis as Klink's secretary Hilda who replaced Helga after the first season.
Among the many things the prisoners did were rig the barbed-wire fence so that it could be opened and closed like a garage door. They fed classified information to the Allied Forces on the outside, helped fugitives escape from Germany, printed counterfeit money and did anything else imaginable to upset the Germans.
Their living conditions looked more like that of a fancy hotel than a POW camp. They had a French chef, a barbershop, a steam room and more comforts than they would have had at home! Since they were more important to the Allied Forces in the camp than out of it, they had no desire to escape, especially considering the fun and excitement they had there.
Ironically John Banner who played the nazi Schultz was actually Jewish and Robert Clary who played the imprisoned LeBeau had been interned in nazi concentration camps as a child.
Bob Crane who played Col Hogan was found beaten to death in an Arizona Hotel room in 1978. ( for more information on that go to The Bob Crane Show Photo Gallery).
Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy created the series and Ed Feldman produced it, for Bing Crosby Productions.
NEW YORK -- Werner Klemperer, a refugee from Nazi Germany who played the bumbling German prison-camp commandant Col. Klink on the TV series, "Hogan's Heroes," has died. He was 80.
Klemperer died of cancer Wednesday at his home in New York, said his publicist, Bernie Ilson.
Klemperer fled Germany in the 1930s with his father, Otto, a distinguished conductor. He eventually won two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Klink on the 1960s sitcom about Allied prisoners of war during World War II.
He also received a Tony nomination in 1988 as a feature actor in a musical for his role in Hal Prince's revival of "Cabaret." Klemperer's film credits included "Death of a Scoundrel" (1956), "The Goddess" (1958), "Judgment at Nuremburg" (1961) and "Ship of Fools" (1965).
Klemperer also appeared as a narrator with nearly every major symphony orchestra in the United States. His repertoire included such works as Beethoven's "Egmont" and "Fidelio," Stravinsky's "L'Historie du Soldat" and "Oedipus Rex."
Larry Hovis' Obituary
September 10, 2003
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Actor Larry Hovis, who played Sgt. Carter in the 1960s television series "Hogan's Heroes" and later taught drama at Texas State University, has died of cancer at the age of 67, the school said on Wednesday.
Hovis was best known for his work in "Hogan's Heroes," the long-running comedy about World War II soldiers in a German prison camp, but also had a recurring role in the television show "Gomer Pyle, USMC" and was a creator and performer on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In."
He got into show business early, forming a musical act with his sister at the age of 5, and went on to become a drummer, singer, comedian, writer, game show producer and stage and television actor, the school said.
He joined the university in the central Texas town of San Marcos in 1990 and taught acting and characterization until his death on Tuesday, the school said.
A memorial service was scheduled for Saturday at the school's Theater Center.
Sigrid Valdis' Obituary
Published December 8, 2007
Sigrid Valdis: 'Pure vamp' of 'Hogan's Heroes'
Patricia Annette Olson (Sigrid Valdis), actress: born Bakersfield, California 21 September 1935; married 1958 George Ateyah (died 1967; one daughter), 1970 Bob Crane (died 1978; one son, one adopted daughter); died Anaheim, California 14 October 2007.
On-screen romance spilled over into real life when Sigrid Valdis married Bob Crane, the star of Hogan's Heroes, the sitcom about a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp with bungling German officers. Valdis played Hilda, voluptuous secretary to the camp's commanding officer Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer) and was often seen smooching with the Allied commander Colonel Robert E. Hogan (Crane), virtually under Klink's nose.
Valdis, who joined the sitcom for its second series, in 1966, was immensely popular as Fräulein Hilda. The American network CBS promoted the actress a former model as a sex goddess and her character as pure vamp. Crane married Valdis on the set of the programme in 1970 and the actress was last seen in an episode screened in the United States in December of that year, halfway through the final run. She gave up acting altogether after the birth of a son and adoption of a daughter.
She was born Patricia Olson, of Swedish descent, in Bakersfield, California, in 1935. Raised in Los Angeles, she started a career as a model and, after marrying a businessman in the fashion industry, and giving birth to a daughter, she studied at the Stella Adler Theatre School, in New York.
Returning to California, Olson soon found herself in demand on television, appearing with the comedians Steve Allen, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar and Red Skelton. She also demonstrated her dramatic talents in episodes of Perry Mason (1960), Burke's Law (1963) and The Wild Wild West (1965), as well as the film comedy Marriage on the Rocks (1965), the James Bond spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the thriller The Venetian Affair (1967).
By this time, she had changed her professional name to Sigrid Valdis and impressed the producers of Hogan's Heroes, having had a one-off part as Klink's reluctant girlfriend, Gretchen, who danced with Hogan, during the sitcom's first series (1965). Following her return as Hilda and the death of her first husband, Valdis married Bob Crane.
The couple separated in 1977 but were reunited before Crane's death the following year. Crane was brutally murdered and revelations followed that he had been addicted to pornography and documented his sexual exploits on video. The 2002 film Auto Focus chronicled the sordid side of Crane's life, with Maria Bello playing Valdis, who opposed the picture's release.
Anthony Hayward
Ivan Dixon's Obituary
Ivan Dixon, Actor in ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Dies at 76
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: March 20, 2008
Ivan Dixon, an actor and director who was best known for playing Sgt. James Kinchloe on the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” but whose films included vivid portrayals of black struggles in the American South and insurrectionist inclinations in the North, died on Sunday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 76 and lived in Charlotte.
Ms. Dixon said her father was always pleased to be recognized as Sergeant Kinchloe, the American radio technician in a World War II German P.O.W. camp who could adeptly mimic his captors. But he was most proud, she said, of the 1964 movie “Nothing but a Man,” in which he starred, and of the 1973 film “The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” which he directed.
In “Nothing but a Man” Mr. Dixon played a young black railroad worker who gives up his job to marry a minister’s daughter, played by Abbey Lincoln, and then runs into trouble for not knowing his place in the Deep South. In a 1991 article on the history of black films, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that “Nothing but a Man” was “way ahead of its time.”
“Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln give tough, moving performances as a couple making their way in a white world without apologies to anyone,” he wrote. “No thoughts of integration for them. They demand their own lives and are willing to fight for them.”
“The Spook Who Sat by the Door,” based on the novel by Sam Greenlee, tells the tale of Dan Freeman, the first black officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. After five years of menial assignments, Freeman quits, takes what he has learned about terrorist tactics and goes to Chicago, where he tries to put together a black guerrilla operation.
Although “The Spook” aroused controversy and was soon pulled from theaters, it later gained cult status as a bootleg video and, in 2004, was released on DVD. At that time Mr. Dixon told The Times that the movie had tried only to depict black anger, not to suggest armed revolt as a solution.
Mr. Dixon directed scores of television shows, including episodes of “The Waltons,” “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Quincy” and “In the Heat of the Night.” In 1967 he played the title role in a CBS Playhouse drama, “The Final War of Olly Winter,” about a veteran of World War II and the Korean War who decides that Vietnam will be his final war. For that role he received an Emmy nomination for best single performance by an actor.
Ivan Nathaniel Dixon 3rd was born on April 6, 1931, in Harlem, where his family owned a grocery store. Besides his daughter, Doris, who lives in Charlotte, Mr. Dixon is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Berlie Ray; and a son, Alan, of Oakland, Calif.
Mr. Dixon graduated from North Carolina Central University in 1954 with a drama degree. His big break came in 1957 when he appeared on Broadway in William Saroyan’s “Cave Dwellers.” Two years later he played Joseph Asagai, the charming, mannerly Nigerian student visiting the United States in Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun,” the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.
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