Posted on 11/17/2022 11:05:41 AM PST by mgstarr
Robert Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II who played a feisty prisoner of war in the improbable 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died. He was 96.
Clary died during the night Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills, niece Brenda Hancock said Thursday.
“He never let those horrors defeat him," Hancock said of Clary's wartime experiences as a youth. “He never let them take the joy out of his life. He tried to spread that joy to others through his singing and his dancing and his painting.”
When he recounted his life to students, he told them, “Don't ever hate,” Hancock said. “He didn't let hate overcome the beauty in this world.”
“Hogan’s Heroes,” in which Allied soldiers in a POW camp bested their clownish German army captors with espionage schemes, played the war strictly for laughs during its 1965-71 run. The 5-foot-1 Clary sported a beret and a sardonic smile as Cpl. Louis LeBeau.
Clary was the last surviving original star of the sitcom that included Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon as the prisoners. Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who played their captors, both were European Jews who fled Nazi persecution before the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Loved him in Hogan’s Heroes! What a personal story!
Amazing life. I used to have his memoir, but I sent it to Lazamataz for Christmas one year, along with potholders.
I still have it! And your potholders! I love them both! :)
Those old shows were filmed which means they translate to HD even better than the newer shows that were taped. It’s a crime Baywatch wasn’t filmed because they couldn’t do that again.
Loved the show. To this day i remember a scene no one else can remember so maybe it was a dream....I could swear there was an episode about the end of the war, D-Day or something, where the prisoners were going to rise up and take over the camp. One of the stars armed himself with a handgun and the other said something like “Not Shultz....Not Shultz” as they were found of him and did not want to kill him. It seemed such a serious moment for an otherwise comedy show.
Was I dreaming? Does anyone ever remember a scene like this?
He played an excellent character in the series!!
I was recently binge watching the show. Even those who cook help the partisans.
Wow. Sorry to hear. Dying at 96 is still a better fate than Bob Crane’s fate, murdered in Phoenix June 1978.
Good! I made potholders all the time for about a year. Maybe I should do that again: it was fun.
I still use the heck outta them! I had to wash them a few times, and they’re a little faded, but still quite useful!
Well, Bob Crane would be 94 if he were still with us today, Werner Klemperer 102, John Banner 112, Ivan Dixon 91, Larry Hovis 86, Leon Askin 115, Cynthia Lynn (Helga) 85, and Richard Dawson would be 90 three days from today.
I guess he wasn't a Superdad after all.
RIP.
I can't imagine going on after that......
Only one still left is Kenneth Washington who took over from Ivan Dixon
Sigrid Valdis, who later married Bob Crane , died in 2007 at age of 72
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