Posted on 08/14/2018 8:21:22 PM PDT by SamAdams76
YouTube is such a time capsule.
When I was growing up, one of the shows my father used to watch was "Hogan's Heroes." I had not actually watched the show since the early 1970s so the show itself was long forgotten but the theme music was always a bit of an earworm, popping up randomly in my head from time to time during the decades since.
About a week ago, I noticed that entire episodes of Hogan's Heroes was on YouTube and decided to click on one.
As the opening credits played, everything was instantly recognizable to me even though it has been maybe 45 years since I last saw it. From the prisoners slipping in the snow outside their barracks to the prison camp searchlights to the monocled Colonel Klink surveying the scene, it was if I last saw it just yesterday!
Even more surprising was the content of of the show itself. When I last saw the show, I was just a 10 year old kid so none of it made much sense to me. I was not able to put things in the context of World War 2 because other than a few bare facts, I knew nothing back then about that war. I guess I actually thought that the Germans in real life actually were the bumbling, easily manipulated fools as portrayed in the show.
But now, nearly half a century later, it all came into focus. During the time since, not only did I actually serve a hitch in the military (Marines) but I became a bit of a WW2 history buff, having read at least a hundred books on the subject over the years.
Now the Hogan's Heroes show, campy as it is, has some relevance to me as I can now put the plots of the show into historical perspective. Also, with my military experience, I can now relate to the soldiers and the arrogance of many of the officers that rule over them.
Also, knowing the horrors of World War 2 and the way that the Germans actually did conduct themselves in that war, I'm surprised that such a show even made it on television in the first place. As that show ran from about 1965-71, the WW2 generation would have been still in their prime, just reaching middle age. How did they react to the light-hearted portrayal of their mortal enemy? I mean, as a kid, I actually thought Sgt Schultz was a likable character, kind of like Curly in the Three Stooges.
I guess back then, people were able to have more of a sense of humor and not take things so seriously.
As I researched the main characters in real life, it was a sobering experience. All of them are dead now. And though I won't go into details here, the main character Hogan (Bob Crane) had a rather sordid life that ended on a scandalous note.
As a classical music fan, I was rather surprised to find out that Colonel Klink was played by Werner Klemperer, son of the world-famous conductor Otto Klemperer (of whom I collected many recordings, not aware of his son's role in the TV show).
Oops.
Another lost weekend?
He must have really liked that role.
Thread is open for theories.
Suzanne Sommers’ birth name is Suzanne Marie Mahoney.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001755/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
According to IMDB, Campo 44 was a pilot for a series that was shown as a TV movie in 1967. Hogan’s Heroes was a series that debuted on TV in 1965.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0143163/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
According to TCM, it was an attempt by NBC to copy HH, which was on CBS, not the other way around.
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/462077/Campo-44/
I remember that scene in “Dirty Harry”....where the cops went rogue. I think David Soul and Robert Urich play two of the rogue cops. I saw that movie in a drive-in theater in Los Angeles when I was in college.
I didn’t know Suzanne Sommers was one of the naked / half-naked girls at the swimming party. Hmmmm.
Come to think of it, Suzanne Sommers was the girl in the T-bird in “American Graffiti.”
I doubt if she will get any more acting roles now that she has come out in support of the President.
Thank you.
Askin was in one of my all-time favorite movies, “One, Two, Three” as the member of the Russian trade delegation.
He also made a quick cameo appearance in “Airplane II” as the Russian news announcer.
I think it was the ultimate joke on the Nazis to have all the major German parts in Hogan’s Heroes played by Jews, who supposedly all had hooked noses, according to the Nazi propaganda of the time.
It reminds me of the testimony of the Auschwitz commandant, Hoess, about how at first he was shocked how “German” the Jews that were going to the gas chambers looked.
James R. Schlesinger took over the CIA and purged the “broken down WWII vets”. Trust me, there was no respect back then.
This was your original statement:
“Baby Boomers went from hating WWII vets to calling them “The Greatest Generation”.
I’ve never seen such an ignorant statement and the spin to correct it is pathetic.
You’re a piece of work.
James R. Schlesinger took over the CIA and purged the “broken down WWII vets”. Trust me, there was no respect back then.
“Ever watch a Norman Lear TV show”?
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You must think Archie Bunker was real and really got shot in the ass during WW II.
Thanks for the “One, Two, Three” tip. I’ll check it out.
The code of Bushido considered it a shame to surrender to an enemy, so the Japanese treated their prisoners thusly. Many times they just ritually executed prisoners on the spot.
He divorced his wife and married the gal who played Klink’s secretary.
Look how Stalin treated the returning Soviet POWs, most where either killed or sent to Siberia. He considered any Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner to be 'traitors'.
#46 it is a free station.
Check here which channel it is on in your area. https://www.tvguide.com/listings
I have seen the reruns many times. I’ve never been a huge fan of the show, but it did have its charms. It was good that we could laugh at Nazism after so much long warfare to end it. Many of the stars died early deaths (Bob Crane was murdered at age 49) but the article is wrong. Not all of the stars are dead. Robert Clary is still living.
#64 Even back then Hollywood was pushing sex with underage boys.
It’s on ME TV every evening, too.
Actually was watching it last night and I said to my wife. This show was produced maybe twenty five years after the war, yet society was able to deal with the reality of what went down and make light of it.
Today, that show could not have been created.
I was a WW2 buff when I was a little kid. I watched the whole “World at War” series when it was on PBS back in the seventies and I agree, that opening theme is very haunting and evocative.
I have rewatched most of this episodes in the last few years. It is really amazing to me now for a couple of reasons. First, it’s absolute lack of PC. The documentarians are brutally honest about how bad the Germans and Japanese really were. Second are the interviews with the folks who made the decisions. Many of those guys were still alive and quite coherent in the early seventies. I found it fascinating when they would show a picture of someone from wartime and then cut to an actual interview with that guy. They had an interview with Karl Doenitz which I thought was amazing.
Many of the episodes are on youtube and are shown periodically on the American Heroes channel. Very compelling if you are a WW2 history guy. Also the episodes are jam packed with information. They don’t rehash everything that they have already presented after every commercial break like most of the cable shows do now.
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