My music teacher, attempting to translate the title of a musical work, asked me, “How’s your German?” I replied, “If it wasn’t in `Hogan’s Heroes,’ I don’t know it.” I meant that as a joke, of course, but it was also close to the truth. I did learn a certain amount of German from that show, and life hasn’t afforded many other opportunities to pick up the language.
Anyway, that conversation got me thinking nostalgically about Hogan’s Heroes. It wasn’t my kind of show when I was a kid, but my brother liked it, and we only had one TV, so I ended up watching it fairly frequently. I doubt that I really got the humor then. Now, having recently streamed the first few episodes of the show, I’m impressed by how funny it is. It has held up well. The lead actor–Bob Crane–turned out to have been a bad person in real life, but he died a long time ago, and it’s hard to hold any strong feelings against him. Plus, the real “hero” of the show was Werner Klemperer. Crane may have had natural appeal, but without Klemperer’s blundering Klink, the show would have been dead in the water. And John Banner’s character, Sergeant “I know nothing!” Schultz, was and probably always will be the one that I remember most fondly.