Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes is probably the wildest most far-fetched series next to Gilligan's Island to become successful where so many even more far-fetched shows barely make it their first year. The show had a fine cast, great writing and even edge of the seat adventures as you wondered how Hogan and his men, Americans Andrew Carter, Sgt. James Kinchloe, Sgt. Richard Baker, British Peter Newkirk, French Louis LeBeau and Russian Leonid Kinsky in the pilot, pulled the wool over and outfoxed the Nazis. Werner Klemperer did a wonderful characterization as the pompous Commodant Wilhelm Klink and John Banner became a hysterical Sgt. Hans Schultz with his mugging and facial expressions. The only other roles of recurring Nazis belong to short-tempered General Ivan Burkhalter and the madman Major Wolfgang Hochstetter as played by Leon Askin and Howard Caine, two wonderful character actors. The critics of this show need to go back to school and learn the differences between P.O.W. Camps and Concentration Camps; even people in Germany watching this show today can see the humor and lack of logic in the Nazi's claims of being the superior master race and it is that same arrogance that works so well against them as Hogan uses their own delusions to his advantages. The show is also worthy to watch to see the early roles of William Christopher from M*A*S*H* and repeating returns of director Norm Pitlik as an actor. During the run of the series, the man must have had thirty different roles. Larry Hovis also made repeated impersonations as Hitler, and Bob Crane even got the chance to shine in one episode with his skills as a drummer. Sadly, the exterior sets of the series no longer exist, vanished along with the fictional towns of Hammelsburg and Mayberry, North Carolina.

This TV show is set in World War II, and that in itself was a very bold move to base a sitcom in a such a dark period of human history. This show excels for having, for the most part a good and generally non-realised talented cast. The stories are entertaining and have a decent amount of tension yet it most definitely doesn't take itself too seriously.

As a previous comment pointed out this show was one of the first to portray an African-American as an equal to white people which was very bold and positive move for a 1960's show. Star Trek had at the same time given black people and women a status of equality to men when they cast Nichelle Nichols as an African American woman as a main character. So I am very pleased at the fact that the producers took a chance and made this character righfully as an equal.

The theme music is catchy, ok may be slightly annoying but Jerry Fielding did a competent job. I a m not sure who scores the rest of the episodes, it seems they reuse and make music for certain episodes and recycle whenever they can probably due to budget but its edited nicely. You may be able to know that film editor Michael Kahn started his editing career on this show and has edited many of Steven Spielbergs films to the present. This brings up the issue of production quality. Not bad for 1960's standards for a less than 30 minute job, editing is pretty good, music, cinematography is alright. Not fantastic but this the 1960s.

The aforementioned cast are filled with talent. Most notably is the principle cast, Schultz (John Banner), Klink (Werner Klemperer) and Hogan (Bob Crane). This show has had nothing but top notch actors and guest actors. Bob Crane may have dabbled in some undesirable off-camera infamous affairs but he is nevertheless a great actor.

Watch this show if you haven't, some episodes are forgettable, some are great, some are just fantastic.

One of the all time best comedies? I would say most probably so :).

Most people don't realize that many of the actors who appeared on HH were persecuted by the Nazis in real life. I think that should help to counter the argument that the show trivialized the sufferings of many under the Nazis. Otherwise, why would John Banner, Werner Von Klemperer, Robert Clary, and Leon Askin (General Burkhalter) consent to do the show? I think they took the parts as a sort of revenge against the Nazis who oppressed them. John Banner and Robert Clary were actually inmates in concentration camps. Werner Von Klemperer had to flee Nazi persecution (because his father, the famous conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Otto, was Jewish). Leon Askin's family were murdered in the Treblinka Death Camp.

The problem with Hogan's heroes is that it has lost its context. People criticize it as a comedy set in a German prisoner of War camp, saying that trivializes the real human tragedies created by the Nazi regime. The thing is, Hogan's Heroes is not a spoof of prison camps. It's a spoof of World War II movies and TV shows. It came out in the wake of films like `The Longest Day', `The Great Escape', etc. which produced shows like `Combat', `The Gallant Men', 12 O'Clock High', all of which were hyper serious because of the subject matter. Such a trend requires a leavening spoof. And `Hogan's Heroes' and `McHale's Navy' provided that comic relief. Nobody ever criticized McHale's Navy for trivializing the Pacific War, any more than they criticized `F Troop' for not being a documentary about the Old West or `Get Smart' for not being written by John LaCarre. Why do we indict Hogan's heroes for being insensitive to the deprivations of the Nazis?

This show is itself based on a hit Broadway play and movie from a decade before called `Stalag 17' which won William Holden an Oscar. If you've seen Stalag 17, the humor there is much cruder and more oblivious of the real threat of the Nazis than Hogan's Heroes. Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck, (later to show up in another Military spoof to which HH also obviously owes a lot), decide at one point they would like to see some female Russian POWS take showers. They grab a bucket of paint and begin painting a stripe down the middle of the road toward the building where the showers are. This fools the guards until the paint a stripe right over to the window of this building, (the showers have windows?), and peer in. There is nothing this crude or insensitive in any episode of Hogan's Heroes. Yet this is a highly regarded film.

But now, 30 years later, when there are fewer films about that era made, the old show is viewed not a spoof of a show business trend but as a parody of the real event, which it was never really intended to be. This has allowed the critics to `pile on' and rip the show for being insensitive to the victims of Nazi oppression. All I remember is a funny show and that's all it was ever intended to be.

I can't see how TV Guide could say that this was one of the all-time worst shows on television. This show was pretty much Mission: Impossible with a laugh track. The crazy schemes that Hogan and his men would think up to thrawt the Nazi war machine were what made this show great. Also, Werner Klemperer will always be loved for his portrayal of the most bumbling officer in television history. But the thing that really made it special was that it was one of the first series to treat an African-American character as an equal to the white characters. Ivan Dixon, who would later go on to become a great director, would often prove to be the smartest member of the cast and perhaps was the most level headed as well. TV Guide needs too look at this show again.