Hogan's Heroes
GenreSitcom
Created by
  • Bernard Fein
  • Albert S. Ruddy
Starring
  • Bob Crane
  • Werner Klemperer
  • John Banner
  • Robert Clary
  • Richard Dawson
  • Ivan Dixon
  • Larry Hovis
  • Kenneth Washington
Music byJerry Fielding
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons6
No. of episodes168 (list of episodes)
Production
ProducerEdward H. Feldman[1]
Running time25 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseSeptember 17, 1965 (1965-09-17) –
March 28, 1971 (1971-03-28)

Hogan's Heroes is an American television sitcom created by Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy which is set in a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in Nazi Germany during World War II, and centers on a group of Allied prisoners who use the POW camp as an operations base for sabotage and espionage activities directed against Nazi Germany. It ran for 168 episodes (six seasons) from September 17, 1965, to April 4, 1971, on the CBS network, and has been broadcast in reruns ever since.

Bob Crane starred as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, coordinating an international crew of Allied prisoners covertly running a special operations group from the camp. Werner Klemperer played Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the obtuse and oblivious commandant of the camp, and John Banner played the gullible and affable sergeant-of-the-guard Hans Schultz.

Overview

Hogan's Heroes centers on U.S. Army Air Forces Colonel Robert Hogan and his staff of experts who are prisoners of war during World War II. The plot occurs during the permanent winter season in the fictionalized Stalag 13 just outside Hammelburg in Nazi Germany, though details in the show are inconsistent with the real-life camp and city's location in Franconia.

According to a title overlay, the pilot episode takes place in 1942. According to subsequent storylines when the group was formed under Hogan's command, he (and they) received the following orders: "You will assist escaping prisoners, cooperate with all friendly forces, and use every means to harass and injure the enemy." Hogan recites those orders verbatim from memory in the Season 3 episode "The Collector General".

Pursuant to those orders, the group secretly uses the camp to conduct Allied espionage and sabotage and to help escaped Allied POWs from other prison camps via a secret network of tunnels that operate under the nose of the inept commandant Klink.

The prisoners cooperate with resistance groups (collectively called "the Underground"), defectors, spies, counterspies, and disloyal German officers to accomplish this. The prisoners sometimes bribe or blackmail otherwise-loyal German officers so as to effectively manipulate their actions. Under Hogan's leadership, the prisoners also devise schemes such as having Sergeant Carter visit the camp disguised as Adolf Hitler as a distraction or rescuing a French Underground agent from Gestapo headquarters in Paris.

To the bafflement of his German colleagues who know him as an incompetent sycophant, Klink technically has a perfect operational record as camp commandant as no prisoners have successfully escaped during his tenure. Hogan and his men assist in maintaining this record so they can continue with their covert operations without active interference from the German military as Hogan would come up with tricks and cover-ups to fool Klink's superior General Albert Burkhalter and the Gestapo's Major Wolfgang Hochstetter.

Considering Klink's record, and the fact that the Allies would never bomb a POW camp, Stalag 13 appears to be a very secure location. As a result, the Germans often use the camp for high-level meetings to hide important persons and develop secret projects. Klink frequently has many other important visitors and is temporarily put in charge of special prisoners.

This brings the prisoners into contact with many important VIPs, scientists, spies, high-ranking officers, and some of Germany's most sophisticated and secret weapons projects such as the Wunderwaffe and the German nuclear weapons program, of which the prisoners take advantage in their efforts to hinder the German war effort.

Setting

The setting is the fictional Luft Stalag 13, a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Allied airmen. Like the historical Stalag XIII-C,[2] it is located just outside a town called Hammelburg. Stalag-13's location in the show is fictional, and does not correspond to the location of the actual Hammelburg. There are frequent references throughout the series to Düsseldorf being the nearest large city, and Düsseldorf is much farther northwest. In the season 1 episode "German Bridge Is Falling Down", Hogan points to a map, and he is clearly pointing to northwest Germany (if anything, even farther north than Düsseldorf.)

The show is a combination of several writing styles that were popular in the 1960s: the "wartime" show, the "spy" show, and "camp comedy".

The camp has 103 Allied prisoners of war during the first season, but becomes larger by the end of the series. Few inmates have significant roles in the storylines other than the featured cast members.

In Stalag 13, there are always patches of snow. Beyond recreating an extreme or adverse setting, this was to prevent problems with continuity and to allow the episodes to be shown in any order. Episodes with obvious non-winter settings, such as "D-Day at Stalag 13," either did not film any scene on the outdoor set or were careful not to show any "snow."

Characters

Episodes

SeasonEpisodesOriginally released
First releasedLast released
132September 17, 1965 (1965-09-17)April 29, 1966 (1966-04-29)
230September 16, 1966 (1966-09-16)April 7, 1967 (1967-04-07)
330September 9, 1967 (1967-09-09)March 30, 1968 (1968-03-30)
426September 28, 1968 (1968-09-28)March 22, 1969 (1969-03-22)
526September 26, 1969 (1969-09-26)March 27, 1970 (1970-03-27)
624September 20, 1970 (1970-09-20)April 4, 1971 (1971-04-04)

Broadcast history

Production

Locations

Hogan's Heroes was filmed in two locations. Indoor sets were housed at Desilu Studios (later known as Paramount Studios and Cinema General Studios). Outdoor scenes were filmed on the 40 Acres backlot. 40 Acres was in Culver City, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.[12] Filmed in warm Southern California, the series was set in Germany during the winter and the actors had to wear warm clothes and frequently pretended to be cold; there was always snow on the ground and rooftops and frost on the windows. The illusion of snow during the first several seasons was made using salt. By the fourth season, the set designers found a more permanent solution and lower cost, using white paint to give the illusion of snow.

After the series ended in 1971, the Stalag 13 set remained standing until 1974 when it was destroyed while filming the final scenes of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975).[13]

Theme music

The theme music was composed by Jerry Fielding, who added lyrics to the theme for Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II – an album featuring Dixon, Clary, Dawson, and Hovis singing World War II songs. The song also appeared on the album Bob Crane, His Drums and Orchestra, Play the Funny Side of TV.[12] Bob Crane, who had started out as a drummer, played the drums when the theme was recorded for the show.[14] The opening drum riff played by Crane in the main title sequence of the show is the same as the riff used in The Longest Day (1962).

Jewish casting

The actors who played the four major German roles—Werner Klemperer (Klink),[15] John Banner (Schultz), Leon Askin (General Burkhalter), and Howard Caine (Major Hochstetter)—were all Jewish. In fact, Klemperer, Banner, and Askin had all fled the Nazis before or during World War II (Caine, whose birth name was Cohen, was an American); Klemperer, the son of conductor Otto Klemperer, fled Hitler's Germany with his family in 1933,[15] Banner emigrated from Switzerland to the United States when Germany annexed his native Austria in 1938,[16] and Askin emigrated from a pre-war French internment camp in 1940 and his parents were initially transported to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz, and killed at Lublin.[17]

Robert Clary, a French Jew who played LeBeau, spent three years in a concentration camp (with an identity tattoo from the camp on his arm, "A-5714"); his parents and other family members were killed there. Other Jewish actors, including Harold Gould and Harold J. Stone, made multiple appearances playing German generals. Also, the Jewish actresses Louise Troy and Nita Talbot each appeared in several episodes. The Jewish actor Hans Conried, was also in some episodes.

In addition to these actors, the program's creators, Bernard Fein and Albert Ruddy, were Jewish.[18]

Laugh track

Network research indicated that the inclusion of a laugh track was considered essential for categorizing a single-camera show as a comedy. This hypothesis was tested on the pilot episode, "The Informer", presenting two versions to test audiences: one with a laugh track and one without. The version without the laugh track, due in part to the show's more cerebral humor, performed poorly, while the version with the laugh track garnered a more favorable reception. Consequently, Hogan's Heroes was broadcast with the laugh track, and CBS subsequently incorporated laugh tracks into all of its comedic programming.[19]

German release: Ein Käfig voller Helden

Despite its international success as a parody of the Nazis, the series was unknown on German television for decades.

German film distributor KirchGruppe acquired broadcasting rights to the show but initially did not air it out of fear that it would offend viewers; in 1992, Hogan's Heroes was finally aired on German television for the first time, but the program failed to connect with viewers due to issues with lip syncing.[20] However, after the dialogue was rewritten to make the German characters look even more foolish (ensuring that viewers understood the characters were caricatures) the show became more successful.

First aired in 1992 on Sat.1 with the title Stacheldraht und Fersengeld, roughly 'Barbed wire and skedaddle', it was soon renamed, somewhat more whimsically in German, to Ein Käfig voller Helden ('A cage full of heroes'), to make it more relatable to the German viewer, and aired under this title from 1994 on, on the Kabel 1 station. Klink and Schultz were given broad Saxon and Bavarian accents, playing on regional stereotypes to underline the notion that they are comical figures. An unseen original character, "Frau Kalinke", was introduced in dialogue only as Klink's maid and perennial mistress, whom he described as performing most of her cleaning duties in the nude.[20]

Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski wrote the 1951 play Stalag 17, a World War II prisoner-of-war story turned into the 1953 feature film Stalag 17 by Paramount Pictures. They sued Hogan's Heroes producer Bing Crosby for infringement, but their lawsuit was unsuccessful. The jury found in favor of the plaintiffs, but a federal judge overruled them. The judge found "striking difference in the dramatic mood of the two works."[12][21]

In 2012, an arbitration hearing was scheduled to determine whether Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy, the creators of the show, had transferred to Bing Crosby Productions the right to make a movie of Hogan's Heroes along with the television rights, or had retained the derivative movie rights.[21] In 2013, Fein's estate and Ruddy acquired the sequel and other separate rights to Hogan's Heroes from Mark Cuban via arbitration, and a movie was planned based on the show.[22]

Reception

Hogan's Heroes won two Emmy Awards out of twelve nominations. Both wins were for Werner Klemperer as Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy, in 1968 and 1969. Klemperer received nominations in the same category in 1966, 1967 and 1970. The series' other nominations were for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1966, 1967 and 1968; Bob Crane for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series in 1966 and 1967; Nita Talbot for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy in 1968; and Gordon Avil for cinematography in 1968.[23]

The producers of Hogan's Heroes were honored in the first annual NAACP Image Awards, presented in August 1967, one of seven television shows and two news shows that were recognized for "the furtherance of the Negro image." Other honorees included I Spy, Daktari, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.[24][25]

In December 2005, the series was listed at number 100 as part of the "Top 100 Most Unexpected Moments in TV History" by TV Guide and TV Land. The show was described as an "unlikely POW camp comedy."[26]

Nielsen ratings

Note: The highest average rating for the series is in bold text.

Season Rank Rating
1) 1965–1966 #9 24.9
2) 1966–1967 #17 21.8 (Tied with The CBS Friday Night Movies)
3) 1967–1968 #38 18.7
4) 1968–1969 #39 19.8
5) 1969–1970 #39 18.9 (Tied with Andy Williams Show and Kraft Music Hall)
6) 1970–1971 Not in the Top 30

Home media

Paramount Home Entertainment (under CBS DVD starting in 2006) has released all six seasons of Hogan's Heroes on DVD in regions 1 and 4. The series was previously released by Columbia House as individual discs, each with five or six consecutive episodes, as well as on a compilation 42 VHS collection of the 168 episodes.

On March 8, 2016, CBS Home Entertainment re-released a repackaged version of the complete series set, at a lower price.[27]

In Australia (Region 4), the first DVD releases were from Time-Life (from around 2002–2005) with each disc sold individually with 4–5 episodes per disc. Between 2005 and 2007 these same discs were packaged as individual complete-season collections.

The complete series was released on Blu-ray in Germany in 2018. The set consists of 23 double-layer BD-50 discs. The discs are region-free. While menus and titles are in German, the episodes include both German and original English audio tracks.[28] On December 13, 2022, Paramount Pictures released the entire Blu-ray series in the United States.

DVD Name Episodes Release dates
Region 1 Region 4
The Complete First Season 32 March 15, 2005 July 30, 2008
The Complete Second Season 30 September 27, 2005 November 7, 2008
The Complete Third Season 30 March 7, 2006 March 5, 2009
The Complete Fourth Season 26 August 15, 2006 June 3, 2009
The Complete Fifth Season 26 December 19, 2006 August 4, 2009
The Complete Sixth and Final Season 24 June 5, 2007 September 30, 2009
The Complete Series (The Kommandant's Collection) 168 November 10, 2009 December 3, 2009[29]
The Complete Series 168 March 8, 2016

December 17, 2019 (Repackaged)

August 12, 2020[30]

Merchandise and promotion

In 1965, Fleer produced a 66-trading card set based on the series.[31] Dell Comics produced nine issues of a series based on the show from 1966 to 1969, all with photo covers. The artwork was provided by Henry Scarpelli.[32] Mad magazine #108 (January 1967) parodied the show as "Hokum's Heroes". An additional one-page parody called "Hochman's Heroes" took the show's premise to the next level by setting it in Buchenwald concentration camp.[33]

In 1968, Clary, Dawson, Dixon, and Hovis recorded an album titled Hogan's Heroes Sing the Best of World War II, which included lyrics for the theme song.[34] While the show was in production, Crane, Klemperer, Askin, and Banner all appeared (as different characters) in the 1968 film The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz.

Film adaptation

Warner Bros. at one point purchased an option for a Hogan's Heroes movie and hired Peter Doyle to write a screenplay, but eventually let the rights lapse.[35] In June 1998, Jim Burke optioned the rights from Rysher Entertainment, the rights holder of the library of Bing Crosby Productions including Hogan's Heroes, and in turn brought them to Paramount Pictures who'd experienced success with TV-to-film adaptations such as The Addams Family and The Brady Bunch Movie.[35] In September of that year, Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey's Icon Productions had begun talks with Paramount to develop and co-finance the adaptation of Hogan's Heroes with Gibson as the potential lead.[36] In September 1999, it was reported the rights had been acquired by Destination Films after Paramount decided not to pursue the adaptation, with a screenplay by producer Keith Samples that would be developed as the shooting script.[37] In October of that year, Destination hired Ross LaManna to write the adaptation.[38] In May 2001, Revolution Studios acquired the rights to Hogan's Heroes following the collapse of Destination Films and hired Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais to write the script.[39] In November of that year, Revolution was reportedly developing the film with Imagine Entertainment as a potential vehicle for Russell Crowe.[40] In 2019, a sequel TV series featuring the descendants of the original cast was reportedly being planned by original series co-creator Al Ruddy, Village Roadshow Entertainment Group and Rough Pictures.[41]

See also

References

  1. Royce, Brenda Scott (October 15, 1998). Hogan's Heroes: Behind the Scenes at Stalag 13 (reprint ed.). Macmillan. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-1580630313.
  2. "Stalag 13 History: What Really Happened There?". Uncommon Travel Germany.
  3. "Cinema Retro Hosts Book Event for Authors Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer". Cinemaretro. May 8, 2015.
  4. "Bob Crane Interview" (Interview). WCFL-AM. August 4, 1972. Archived from the original on December 11, 2021 – via YouTube.
  5. Weinraub, Bernard (December 8, 2000). "Werner Klemperer, Klink in 'Hogan's Heroes,' Dies at 80". The New York Times.
  6. Witbeck, Charles (April 16, 1967). "Ex-Villain John Banner Turns 'Good Guy'". Fresno Bee. p. 15-TV – via Newspapers.com.
  7. "John Banner, the Sgt. Schultz Of 'Hogan's Heroes,' Dies at 63". The New York Times. February 2, 1973.
  8. King, Susan (March 24, 2013). "Robert Clary a survivor in life and entertainment". Los Angeles Times.
  9. "Hogan's Heroes – IAVM".
  10. "Hogan's Heroes star Richard Dawson dies". ABC News (Australia). June 3, 2012. His role as a military prisoner in the 1965 film King Rat led to TV's Hogan's Heroes, about a band of allied POWs in a German camp who were constantly fooling their captors.
  11. Hayward, Anthony (May 16, 2008). "Ivan Dixon: Kinchloe in 'Hogan's Heroes'". The Independent. London.
  12. Royce, Brenda Scott (October 15, 1998). Hogan's Heroes: Behind the Scenes at Stalag 13. Renaissance Books. p. 22. ISBN 978-1580630313.
  13. Buttsworth, Sara; Maartje Abbenhuis, eds. (2010). Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-war Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 105. ISBN 978-0313382161.
  14. Hadley, Mitchell. "The real Bob Crane: An interview with Carol M. Ford, author of Bob Crane: The Definitive Biography".
  15. Weintraub, Bernard (December 8, 2000). "Werner Klemperer, Klink in 'Hogan's Heroes,' Dies at 80". The New York Times.
  16. Witbeck, Charles (April 16, 1967). "Ex-Villain John Banner Turns 'Good Guy'". Fresno Bee. p. 96 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Leon Askin - Biography". www.askin.at.
  18. [1]
  19. Kitman, Marvin (August–September 1981). "Don't Make Me Laugh". Channels of Communication.
  20. Steinmetz, Greg (May 31, 1996). "In Germany Now, Col. Klink's Maid Cleans in the Nude". The Wall Street Journal. p. A1. Archived from the original on January 24, 2003 – via Hogan's Heroes Fan Club.
  21. Gardner, Eric (March 21, 2012). "WGA Fights Over Movie Rights to 'Hogan's Heroes'". The Hollywood Reporter.
  22. Fleming, Mike Jr. (March 15, 2013). "'Hogan's Heroes' Rights Won Back By Creators Al Ruddy And Bernard Fein; They're Plotting New Movie". Deadline Hollywood.
  23. "Nominations &#124". Emmys.com. September 20, 2015.
  24. "NAACP Will Present Nine Image Awards," Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1967
  25. Kathleen Fearn Banks, Historical Dictionary of African-American Television, pp. 304-305, Scarecrow Press, 2006 https://archive.org/details/historicaldictio0000fear/page/n3/mode/2up
  26. "TV Guide and TV Land Join Forces To Count Down The 100 Most Unexpected TV Moments". PR Newswire. December 1, 2005. Archived from the original on August 30, 2006.
  27. Lambert, David. "'The Complete Series' is Getting a DVD Re-Release Soon!". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Archived from the original on December 17, 2015.
  28. Hogan's Heroes: The Complete Series Blu-ray
  29. Hogan's Heroes. Booktopia.
  30. "Hogan's Heroes: The Complete Series (Seasons 1 - 6)". EzyDVD.
  31. "Fleer Hogan's Heroes 1965 Trading Card Set". Oldbubblegumcards.com.
  32. "Henry Scarpelli". lambiek.net.
  33. "Mad #108". Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site. January 1967.
  34. "Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II". Hogan's Heroes Fan Club. Archived from the original on September 4, 2006.
  35. "Par captures 'Hogan's Heroes'". Variety. Archived from the original on April 13, 2014.
  36. "Gibson zeroes in on 'Hogan's Heroes'". Variety.
  37. "Capturing 'Hogan's'". Variety. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021.
  38. "LaManna will adapt 'Heroes'". Variety. Archived from the original on August 8, 2025.
  39. "'Hogan' turns to Revolution". Variety. Archived from the original on October 20, 2021.
  40. "Newell mulls 'Jury,' 'Mona'". Variety. November 28, 2001. Archived from the original on April 7, 2025.
  41. "'Hogan's Heroes' Sequel Series In the Works From Al Ruddy, Village Roadshow & Rough House Pictures". Deadline. September 17, 2019.
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