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Robert Clary, Corporal LeBeau on ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Dies at 96
The Hollywood Reporter ^ | 11/16/22 | Mike Barnes

Posted on 11/16/2022 3:20:54 PM PST by Borges

Robert Clary, the French actor, singer and Holocaust survivor who portrayed Corporal LeBeau on the World War II-set sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, has died. He was 96.

Clary, who was mentored by famed entertainer Eddie Cantor and married one of his five daughters, died Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles, his granddaughter Kim Wright told The Hollywood Reporter.

CBS’ Hogan’s Heroes, which aired over six seasons from September 1965 to April 1971, starred Bob Crane as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, an American who led an international group of Allied prisoners of war in a convert operation to defeat the Nazis from inside the Luft Stalag 13 camp.

As the patriotic Cpl. Louis LeBeau, the 5-foot-1 Clary hid in small spaces, dreamed about girls, got along great with the guard dogs and used his expert culinary skills to help the befuddled Nazi Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer) get out of trouble with his superiors.

Clary was the last surviving member of the show’s original principal cast.

Born Robert Max Widerman in Paris on March 1, 1926, Clary was the youngest of 14 children in a strict Orthodox Jewish family. At age 12, he began singing and performing; one day when he was 16, he and his family were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.

“My mother said the most remarkable thing,” Clary told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Peter Flax in late 2015. “She said, ‘Behave.’ She probably knew me as a brat. She said, ‘Behave. Do what they tell you to do.'”

Clary’s parents were murdered in the gas chamber that day.

At Buchenwald, Clary sang with an accordionist every other Sunday to an audience of SS soldiers. “Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survived,” he told Flax.

Clary was incarcerated for 31 months (he worked in a factory making 4,000 wooden shoe heels each day) and tattooed with the identification “A-5714” on his left forearm. He was the only one of his captured family to make it out alive.

He chose not to talk about his Holocaust experience for almost four decades. “For 36 years I kept these experiences during the war locked up inside myself,” he once said. “But those who are attempting to deny the Holocaust, my suffering and the suffering of millions of others have forced me to speak out.”

Did Clary have any reservations about doing a comedy series dealing with Nazis and concentration camps?

“I had to explain that [Hogan’s Heroes] was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps,” he wrote in his inspirational 2001 memoir, From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes.

After being liberated, Clary returned to France in May 1945 and sang in dance halls. He came to Los Angeles in 1949 to record for Capitol Records and a year later appeared in a French comedy skit on a CBS variety show hosted by vaudevillian Ed Wynn.

Clary appeared in such films as Ten Tall Men (1951) and Thief of Damascus (1952), then met Cantor, who took him to New York to perform at the tony La Vie en Rose club. He came to the attention of producer Leonard Sillman, who cast Clary in the Broadway musical revue New Faces of 1952.

He sang “Lucky Pierre” and “I’m In Love With Miss Logan” in the show, which also featured Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde, Ronny Graham, Alice Ghostley and Carol Lawrence and had sketches written by Mel Brooks. New Faces was filmed by Fox and played in movie theaters in 1954.

Clary then appeared again on Broadway in 1955 in the musical Seventh Heaven, which starred Gloria DeHaven, Ricardo Montalban and Bea Arthur.

The actor showed up in the Paris-set Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward film A New Kind of Love (1963), and in the Robert Wise-directed The Hindenburg (1975), he portrayed a passenger (a circus acrobat) on the doomed airship’s final voyage.

Clary also worked on the daytime soap operas Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless (his character, Pierre Roulland, owned a restaurant/club in Genoa City, then was murdered) and The Bold and The Beautiful.

He sang on several jazz albums that featured the work of songwriters like Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer. (Also a part of his discography: Hogan’s Heroes Sing the Best of WWII, recorded with his castmates Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon.)

Clary worked closely with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, speaking at universities across the country for more than two decades.

An accomplished painter, Clary was married for 32 years to the late Natalie Cantor, the second daughter of Eddie Cantor. She died in 1997.


TOPICS: TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: hogansheroes; lebeau; robertclary
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To: Doctor Congo

The triple obese and red faced General Burkhalter actor lived to be 99, IIRC.


61 posted on 11/16/2022 4:21:49 PM PST by Doctor Congo
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To: rdl6989

I like that idea.


62 posted on 11/16/2022 4:22:29 PM PST by wally_bert (I cannot be sure for certain, but in my personal opinion I am certain that I am not sure.)
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To: SkyDancer

Lol! Sounds like the Doc created a monster.


63 posted on 11/16/2022 4:23:42 PM PST by EvilCapitalist (81 million votes my ass.)
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To: EvilCapitalist
That was a great show.

Bob Crane's demise wasn't very pretty.

64 posted on 11/16/2022 4:25:55 PM PST by GingisK
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

I saw a few they were hand written. Humiliating yes


65 posted on 11/16/2022 4:30:32 PM PST by stanne
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To: military cop

They were all Germans and holocoaust survivors. It was brilliant. Even general burkhalter. That was real comedy

If they can get rid of the laugh track…

Rip Robert Clary.


66 posted on 11/16/2022 4:31:58 PM PST by stanne
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To: Borges
Very sad to hear that. He spent time in a concentration camp as a kid...can't recall how long. He had his number tattooed on his arm. I,for one,can't see how he was able to play LeBeau. For that matter several of the Heroes’ cast members lost family in the Holocaust.
67 posted on 11/16/2022 4:34:58 PM PST by Gay State Conservative (I Miss Jimmy Carter)
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To: Borges

They could have posted a better photo of him at the top of the page.


68 posted on 11/16/2022 4:36:31 PM PST by minnesota_bound (Need more money to buy everything now)
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To: Gay State Conservative

The Jewish actors who played the bumbling Germans viewed it as their way of flipping the bird at antisemitism.


69 posted on 11/16/2022 4:37:19 PM PST by Reily
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To: Borges

He lived a short life...


70 posted on 11/16/2022 4:39:15 PM PST by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

You and I should be friends.

I smoke, drink and eat fried food but, I eat a hell of a lot veggies because I just love the taste of them.

True story.


71 posted on 11/16/2022 4:40:34 PM PST by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: stanne

> If they can get rid of the laugh track…<

Yep. I have a nice DVD collection of my favorite TV comedies. But they are hard to watch because of the obtrusive laugh track. Some smart guy ought to buy the rights to these shows, and re-issue them with the laugh track removed.


72 posted on 11/16/2022 4:43:38 PM PST by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: EvilCapitalist

Ivan Dixon was in the movie Car Wash


73 posted on 11/16/2022 4:43:54 PM PST by al baby (Yes he did he said how come i wasnt invited )
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To: Vendome

True story.


You should have typed “No joke!”.


74 posted on 11/16/2022 4:45:09 PM PST by nesnah (Infringe - act so as to limit or undermine [something]; encroach on)
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To: Vendome

I see what you did there.


75 posted on 11/16/2022 4:50:08 PM PST by EvilCapitalist (81 million votes my ass.)
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To: Borges

We had broadcast TV, then PBS to choose from. I’d watch Hogan’s Heroes reruns every day after school. Learned about WWII that way.


76 posted on 11/16/2022 4:50:35 PM PST by NetAddicted (Just looking)
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To: Leaning Right; BudgieRamone; military cop; enraged

Werner Klemperer was perhaps the coolest TV character actor, ever. Certainly right up there with Steve McQueen.

Klemperer served in the US Army in The Bulge, as an MP.

His character was inspired by the German Kommandant in Stalag 17. When he accepted the role of Colonel Klink, he had one condition: The Nazis “Must be STUPID!”

I Was just a kid but I greatly admired a German-American actor who had the cojones to play Colonel Klink. He was my favorite.

But back to the subject, RIP Robert Clary.


77 posted on 11/16/2022 4:51:11 PM PST by OKSooner ("Oh, the mad fools!")
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

“I just turned 60 two weeks ago and I don’t feel any different from 30. I wish I did, I would probably be more responsible about my health which I am reckless as F about. I still smoke and drink and eat crap food.”
I can relate, I turn 70 early next year. If I knew that I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.


78 posted on 11/16/2022 5:02:26 PM PST by wjcsux (RIP Rush Limbaugh 12 Jan 1951- 17 Feb 2021. We really miss you. 😢)
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda
I was reading an article about Dick Van Dyke last month who is 96 now. He said he quit smoking when he was 78. That is the LAST thing I needed to hear lol lol

LOL. My late step-mother quit smoking when she was 75.... and she lived to 96. So there's that to look forward to!

79 posted on 11/16/2022 5:05:31 PM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. )
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda
Why did the Nazis tattoo arms? Was it just to humiliate?

No. Teutonic obsession with record keeping and documentation, IMHO. Apologies to any Germans reading this.

80 posted on 11/16/2022 5:07:59 PM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. )
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