Wake Me When the War Is Over

As an early TV-movie, this rounded up a welter of stars from popular 1960s sitcoms that had just been cancelled. It's too bad the writers didn't give them anything new to do.

Leading the charge is Ken Berry as a good-hearted, dutiful but otherwise oblivious and bumbling American officer. A World War II clone of his Captain Parmenter from F-Troop. Eva Gabor is an aristocratic socialite again, so if you've seen Green Acres, you know what to expect. Werner Klemperer brings back Colonel Klink under a different name. And Jim Backus is the same blustery blowhard he was as Thurston Howell. This must have been very easy to write since all the writers had to do was imagine what the previous characters would have done. But that's to be expected since the two writers of this never had sitcom experience. They were gag writers for variety shows.

It has its charms as a piece of very lightweight fluff. Just don't go in expecting too much or you'll be disappointed.

A clumsy (and gullible) American Lieutenant Roger Carrington (Ken Berry) in charge of dropping propaganda leaflets over Germany during a mission at the close of World War Two falls out of the plane and parachutes into enemy territory. He escapes the horrors of a prisoner of war camp by breaking into the castle of a lonely and flighty widowed Baroness Marlena Hoffman (Gabor).

He eludes the attention of the very determined German Major (Werner Klemperer) out to capture both him and the heart of the Baroness. She instead romances the American and refuses to let him leave even after the war has been over for several years.

The possessive Baroness lies to him telling him that Germany is winning the war and since he can't speak German and is out of radio contact he doesn't know the difference. She creatively translates print news to keep the charade going. She even gives local veterans beer money to dress up in their old uniforms and drop by the house pretending that the war is still going on so he'll think she still has to hide him.

Only one of the servants, a pretty young maid named Ava, decides that the charade is cruel and aims to put a stop to it. If only she could speak English she could tell him what has been going on. Then the old Major finds out about the ruse and decides to have a bit of fun with Roger. A few other Germans wistful about the days of the Third Reich also decide to have a bit of fun with Roger. A string of coincidences serve to keep things unnecessarily complicated.

Think F-Troop meets Hogan's Heroes meets Green Acres if you want to be cynical. Berry, Gabor and Klemperer are not exactly trying to expand their acting range in these roles. It could just as easily have been Bob Crane (or Don Knotts or Bob Denver) in Berry's role or Barbara Eden in Gabor's. In fact it could just as easily have been a cartoon for the most part.

Werner Klemperer, Norbert Schiller, Jon Cedar, Ben Wright, Walter Janowitz, Martin Kosleck, Parley Baer were all on Hogan's Heroes at one time or another during its six-year run. Baer had also appeared on Green Acres. Woodrow Parfrey had been on Mayberry RFD. These people all knew each other and how to play off of each other and made a big difference as far as timing goes maximizing the potential of the material.

Green Acres and Hogan's Heroes as well as Mayberry RFD (on which Berry starred in addition to F-Troop) were all casualties axed by CBS in 1971. Few of the cast members of those shows had careers as bright after that. But the stars of these shows were in some cases still under contract to their respective production companies in 1969 and still very popular with small screen audiences. The result is a movie like this, which pools their resources.

Ken Berry had graduated from F-Troop to the Andy Griffith spin off Mayberry RFD. Werner Klemperer (an absolute scream hamming it up in his role here) had portrayed Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes for six years and Gabor (Zsa Zsa or Eva? Like there's a difference) had starred on Green Acres for the same amount of time. Even Jim Backus formerly of Gilligan's Island (another CBS staple) made it out for this one.

This paint-by-numbers TV sitcom romantic comedy produced by Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas could have been so much more if the people behind it had decided that they actually wanted to do something different. But the slapstick elements are done well and it is a fun madcap romp, which plays like a typical Disney movie. Thomas was a sitcom pioneer and filled the cast with actors who were well known within the genre. A number of them had worked with him or for him numerous times before.

There are various TV sitcom style moments in which the characters comically make their way through different mildly funny situations. It runs only 75 minutes, which I attribute to commercial breaks. Even at that short length it looks as though it was padded with a couple of minutes with a long opening titles door knob sequence inter-cut with and followed by stock footage of wartime newsreels to set the scene and minutes here and there throughout of even more stock footage. The costuming and sets look like they were expropriated leftovers from other productions.

The mostly small screen cast, crew and producers concoct harmless escapist family entertainment that is actually quite tolerable in parts. "Not nearly as stupid as it looks" is not the type of critic's blurb that ends up on a movie poster or the back of a DVD but it is the one I am sticking with because it fits.

With World War 2 in its final stages an American C-47 transport plane is flying over Germany releasing propaganda leaflets encouraging the Germans to surrender. However, when enemy flak rocks the airplane one of the Americans named "Lieutenant Roger Carrington" (Ken Berry) is accidentally thrown out and is forced to parachute behind enemy lines. Although his parachute is spotted by German troops he manages to evade them long enough to take shelter in a house owned by a wealth baroness named "Marlene" (Eva Gabor) who not only hates the war but has recently been widowed and is quite lonely. So to remedy the situation she hides him in a secret basement until the German troops begin to search elsewhere. Not long afterward, the war ends but rather than telling Roger this news Marlene convinces him that it is raging even more violently in order to keep him there with her. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather typical light-hearted comedy for the period in which it was made and was helped somewhat by the appearances of several grade-B actors including Werner Klemperer (as the German officer "Major Erich Mueller"), Jim Backus (as the American "Colonel") along with the aforementioned Ken Barry and Eva Gabor. To be clear, while this isn't a great comedy by any means, it managed to pass the time well enough and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

The Plot. During the latter days of WW2 an American Lieutenant (Berry), accidentally falls out of an airplane that he was on and falls into German territory.

He is taken in by a Baroness (Gabor). She is taken with him and doesn't want him to leave, so she doesn't tell him that the war has ended.

So, for nearly five years he thinks that the war is still going on, and so when he leaves her estate he thinks that he has to do what he can to defeat the Germans, cause he can't find anyone who speaks English or is willing to tell him that the war is over.

This is basically a rehash of the Japanese WW2 story of a soldier who didn't know the war was over. That was a comedy too. Mell Brooks made fun of Nazis and it not only was in TWO movies, but also on Broadway. So Jason Daniel Baker who wrote a moronic dissertation on IMDb is a fool.

Get a life.

Is this a good movie? Not really. It's a TV film that you can sit through. It takes a bit to get started and then it kicks in. Not awful, but not so memorable. It's serviceable.

The available prints of this color movie are bleached out so there is virtually no color any more. More like a green hue with an occasionally red.

Gabor was the hot sister.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of this one. I wouldn't say it was 'good', but I've got a soft spot for Ken Berry and I got a kick out of the rest of the 1960's vintage cast… it's worth watching if you like that kind of thing. Probably the best of the bunch was Hans Conreid as a psychotic ex-Nazi kindergarten teacher whose curriculum includes teaching five-year-olds to throw grenades in preparation for the next war, which he fully intends for the glorious Fatherland to finally win for a change. Bad taste, yeah probably… but Conreid delivered and I thought his was one of the best performances.

Lots of "Hogan's Heroes" alumni in addition to Werner Klemperer: Jon Cedar and Walter Janowitz, who both had recurring roles on the series appear, as do occasional guest-stars like Woody Parfrey and Parley Baer. (How did John Banner get out of being in this movie, which required so many comic Germans?) I don't recall that Klemperer's character was the mayor, though… could there be some confusion because his troops referred to him as "Herr Major" during the war, which in German is pronounced "my-OR"? The version I saw on streaming had truly terrible, badly-echoing sound in the scenes that took place in the foyer in Gabor's mansion; they could have gotten better quality with two tin cans and a piece of string. Sound was okay in the rest of the film, though.

Five stars for the nostalgia factor and occasional cute bits, but nothing that can be seriously recommended for any other reason. Baby-boomers may enjoy it if their expectations aren't terribly high.