Goldfinger Knows Nooothing

Ridicule is a weapon. And some 20 years after the end of World War Two, America was still fighting the Nazis, except using ridicule.

It was called Hogan’s Heroes.

Well, it’s a stretch to call the main supporting “enemy” characters Nazis. Werner Klemperer’s Colonel Klink and John Banner’s Sergeant Schultz were reluctant German soldiers at best. Klink was a father’s disappointment who wanted his ego fed, Schultz seemed to hope the war would end any minute so he could go back to his toy shop. (Banner liked kids in real life; Richard Dawson remembered how Banner would come over and play with his children). But there was a menacing Nazi threat in the plot almost every episode which somehow got ignominiously defeated.

Klink and Schultz were really cartoonish characters, so that’s perhaps why I liked them. Both Klemperer and Banner’s fame came from the series, though Klemperer was also known as the son of outstanding conductor Otto Klemperer. Both actors came to North America to escape Nazism during Hitler’s rise. I suspect their roles (as well those of a number of Jews in the cast, especially Robert Clary) gave them great satisfaction that they posthumously stuck it to Adolf.

Banner was interviewed a number of times while the series was running. Here are a pair of syndicated newspaper columns, the first from the National Enterprise Association of October 1, 1965, and the second from the Los Angeles Times News Service from September 1st the same year.

One more series used Banner’s talents, but it only lasted 13 weeks in 1971. It was The Chicago Teddy Bears, and included Marvin Kaplan, Art Metrano and Huntz Hall in the cast. He was only 63 when died in 1973 of a stomach rupture while back in his birthplace of Vienna.

John Banner Ate His Way to a New Role
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—Jackie Gleason, at 254 pounds, has lost his title as the biggest comedian on television.
The new champ, at 260 pounds, is John Banner.
Banner is the Vienna-born actor who plays the comedy role of Sgt. Hans Schultz in CBS-TV's "Hogan's Heroes." Background of the show is a World War II German prisoner of war camp and Hans is a bungling Nazi sergeant.
Banner "blames" his obesity on the good cooking of his French wife, Christine, who he claims is the world's best cook. "But of course, he adds, "I am a great lover of food. Until I met and married Christine, however, I really didn't know how or what to eat."
Until he met and married Christine, he laughs, "I was the leading man type—I weighed only 178 pounds."
The story of the leading man who became a portly character actor because of his wife's cooking was just one ironic note to be found this day on the set of "Hogan's Heroes."
The company was filming camp compound scenes on a movie back lot where the city of Atlanta was built, and burned, for the movie, "Gone With the Wind." Over the "southern" soil the Nazi flag now waved.
Over "southern" soil prop men also had scattered salt to double for German snow. For the winter scenes members of the cast were huddled in heavy wool overcoats—and perspiration dripped from their faces as if they were melting ice.

As usual in Hollywood, the shooting schedule calling for the outdoor winter scenes fell on one of the year's hottest days. The temperature was 89 degrees. John Banner's background is just as eyebrow lifting. This jovial man now playing a Nazi had fled from his native Vienna to the U.S. when Hitler's army marched into Austria.
In 1942 he joined the U.S. Army, taking his basic training at Atlantic City. While there he posed for an official army recruiting poster (widely used at Easter time) of a GI kneeling in prayer in church with hands clasped and rifle resting on his chest.
The accent John brought from Vienna has limited the acting he learned in Zurich to German, Russian and French characters. He has always wanted to appear in a western because of his theory that many of the first settlers in the west were German, some with heavy accents and some with no knowledge of English at all. "I have talked to many TV and movie producers and directors about this," he says. "They all agree with me but they all tell me, "The public wouldn't accept it! I wonder."

Viewing TV
Sgt. Schultz to Make Debut in CBS Series
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD—John Banner is a 270-pound Austrian-American actor who has made almost an entire career of playing sputtering comic German soldiers.
His latest movie role was as the German sergeant with James Garner and Eva Marie Saint in "36 Hours." On Sept. 17 the TV audience will see his debut as Sgt. Schultz in the new CBS comedy series, "Hogan's Heroes."
Like many actors, Banner resents being type-cast, but not to the extent that he will pass up a steady job.
"This fellow Schultz on 'Hogan's Heroes' I'm very happy with. It's a miracle I got, the part at all. Everything seemed too perfect," he says.
IT WAS MORE than happenstance which got Banner off on his soldier character. A Czech by the name of Hasek had written a novel called "The Brave Soldier Schweik," which Banner had read.
Schweik was a World War I Austrian private, a hapless fellow who was drawn into trouble in spite of himself. Banner saw Soldier Schweik as a great type to copy as an actor.
"I believe it's wonderful to be able to laugh about militarism," says Banner.
He might have added that it is even necessary to laugh about it every so often if we are to remain sane. Part of his family and many friends were victims of the Hitlerian scourge which swept Austria while he was acting at Schauspielhaus in Zurich, Switzerland, under a two-year contract.
Following the Anschluss, Banner escaped through Switzerland to the United States in 1938.
IT WASN'T long after arriving here that Banner found himself a soldier in the U.S. Air Corps, and in a rare flash of military perspicacity he was made a supply sergeant.
"But this was a different army. I remember how amazed I was at being able to gripe about everything I didn't like and was told I could even write a letter to my congressman. In Germany I would have been shot for just thinking such a thing," adds Banner, laughing.
As Sgt. Schultz in "Hogan's Heroes," Banner is playing a German guard in a prisoner of war camp and becomes an unwilling ally of the American prisoner Col. Hogan (Bob Crane) and his men through fear of being sent to the Russian front.

"SOME PEOPLE ask me how we can be funny about a prison camp in the war, and I say to them how was it possible to write about two little old ladies who killed 12 men and buried them in the basement and make it funny? Well, somebody did, and it was called 'Arsenic and Old Lace.' We will always be able to laugh at someone flaunting authority," Banner maintains.
In addition to his blimp-type German, Banner has played a variety of Russian and Hungarian types. Now that he's been a naturalized American for many years, however, he is a bit piqued at the number of foreign actors imported for roles in American movies.
"For some reason," Banner says quite seriously, "Hollywood would rather take in foreigners. Now I could have played Goldfinger, but not, they brought over Gert Froebe, who did it well, but there were people here to do it.
"I saw 'Moraluri,' and I find they brought over four German actors for that one. Why is that? I can't work in England or most other countries because they don't want American actors," Banner adds, disgustedly.
Couldn't he work in Germany a while, then wait for American producers to rediscover him, I asked facetiously.
"Sure, in Germany I can work, but they don't make pictures there. There is no money," Banner sputters. Of course, if Hogan's Heroes clicks with the 1100 Nielsen rating families, and the sponsors' wives have no serious objection to Sgt. Schultz, Banner can be happy he is an American actor with a Viennese accent he can parlay into German, Russian, Swiss or South Slabovian.