Hogan’s Heroes – The Complete First Season
Picture: B-
Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B
It was a big hit TV series, but in recent years, Hogan’s
Heroes has become the latest victim of attacks by the Politically Correct
Left for being insensitive. Of course,
this was always considered a problematic show, even criticized in its
time. A situation comedy set in a Nazi
Prisoner Of War camp is tricky, but was the show a hit for all the wrong
reasons? Paramount’s release of The
Complete First Season gives us a chance to look at the show and see that
the case is just not that simple.
Jewish Americans were still very invisible on Network TV
at the time, though two Holocaust survivors (Werner Klemperer and Robert Clary
(see more on Clary in Unlikely Heroes, reviewed elsewhere on this site))
had prominent roles. The show did not
glorify The Nazis, making them out to be buffoons, but undeniably skipped the
dark reality of their torture and genocide.
It must be remembered that the series was playing by TV rules of the
time, and knowing as much as the audience understood that they would never see
anything that realistic on TV under any circumstances, assumed audiences knew
the reality and could separate it from a TV show. In the case of a situation comedy with an obvious laugh track,
along with the fact that the show itself was a send-up of the Otto Preminger’s
1953 motion picture classic Stalag 17, it was TV trying to be as
memorable as the movies. It is the way
TV finally overtook the old Hollywood studio system. The series was even shot at the famous Desilu Studios, the
Lucille Ball company that once was RKO Radio Pictures.
That context does not totally eradicate what would now be
considered insensitive to some extent, but we could ask if even Hogan and his
men would reasonably know about Nazi Concentration Camps. There is at least a 50% chance they would
not. The show has Bob Crane as the
title leader of a group of trapped Allied soldiers who make sure Stalag 13
(lucky for them, unlucky for The Nazis) keeps a prefect record of no escapes so
their inept Colonel Klink (Klemperer) stays in power so they can run their
secret operation. This is to have a
secret outpost to save Allied lives and pass top-secret equipment and
information. If you were an Allied
Soldier in this position, you would be morally bankrupt not to take
advantage of it, though the show is not even this dire.
Again, this is a comedy, and I would argue one that was
never derogatory of any of the characters, though The Nazis were buffoons. The sitcom trappings made Klink and Schultz
too likable, but that is the convention and only because they are patsies can
Hogan and company fool them. This is a
dark premise and the intelligence of the teleplays actually are smart enough to
play on this without denying the darkness of the situation, as much as a sitcom
launched in 1965 would let them do it.
This is quite a tightrope to walk, but remarkably, it works for what it
is. The half-hour slotted episodes are:
1) The
Informer
2) Hold
That Tiger
3) Kommandant
Of The Year
4) The Late
General Inspector
5) The
Flight Of The Valkyrie
6) The
Prisoner’s Prisoner
7) German
Bridge Is Falling Down
8) Movies
Are Your Best Escape
9) Go Light
On The Heavy Water
10) Top Hat, White Tie & Bomb Sights
11) Happiness Is A Warm Sergeant
12) The Scientist
13) Hogan’s Hofbrau
14) Oil For The Lamps Of Hogan
15) Reservations Are Required
16) Anchors Aweigh, Men Of Stalag 13
17) Happy Birthday, Adolph
18) The Gold Rush
19) Hello, Zolle
20) It Takes A Thief… Sometimes
21) The Great Impersonation
22) The Pizza Parlor
23) The 43rd, A Moving Story
24) How To Cook A German Goose With Radar
25) Psychic Kommandant
26) The Prince From The Phone Company
27) The Safecracker Suite
28) I Look Better In Basic Black
29) The Assassin
30) Cupid Comes To Stalag 13
31) The Flame Grows Higher
32) Request Permission To Escape
The problem with the show is that this becomes formulaic,
but it never worked as any kind of even accidental “pro-Nazi” or revisionist
propaganda, unless you are on prolonged substance abuse. The cast, also including John Banner as
Schultz (“I see nothing. I know
nothing.”), Richard Dawson as head British Officer Newkirk, Ivan Dixon, Larry
Hovis and Cynthia Lynn as Helga, also happens to have chemistry. There is also some deep, unspoken
satisfaction watching the show that The Nazis were idiots and deserve to be
thoroughly humiliated on this level, and that is something the big audiences
had to be cheering for as they watched.
John Sturges’ The Great Escape quietly works the same way, an
action drama that remains a true classic in a Nazi P.O.W. camp. If we lived in a Nazi world with Pro-Nazi
and Nazi Skinheads running things, Hogan’s Heroes is a series that would
be censored, destroyed, and would get people killed for owning a copy or any
items associated with or related to the show.
That is a success and small triumph that is easy to forget. Eliminating the laugh track would not change
anything either to the detriment of the ugly history of WWII and The
Holocaust. This show is a comedy and it
knows it and that the underpinnings are still dark. The audience is never humiliated, something most sitcoms since
the 1980s are far guiltier of, and all the characters have just enough dignity
for the show to hold together.
As for other comedies on Nazis, the great Charlie Chaplin
did say that he would not have made his incredible Great Dictator (1940)
if he had known about The Holocaust, but was right to attack the Axis Powers
and Hitler in particular, who (scary and bizarre as it is) stole some of his
look in a sick way. As for films about
The Holocaust that offer comedy like Jakob/Jacob The Liar (both the
German original and U.S. remake) and Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful,
they are more problematic than Hogan’s Heroes could ever be. The Liar films push the envelope that
any prisoner in a ghetto or death camp could get away with what the title
character does, though we known many did more realistically did, while the
award-winning Benigni film takes place in Auschwitz. Godard voiced that if he thinks life is beautiful in Auschwitz,
that’s his problem, but the good intents of that film cannot override the
realities of genocide. Hogan’s
Heroes was smart enough never to go there, but because Benigni’s film was
considered “acceptable”, you have a double standard. Hogan’s Heroes never pretended to be more than a sitcom,
while Benigni is looking for moral redemption where there is none and that
trivializes The Holocaust more than a send-up of Stalag 17.
Of course, the same can be said for the hundreds of
Holocaust films, especially since Steven Spielberg got it right with Schindler’s
List in 1992. He knows there can be
nothing feel-good about Auschwitz and the use of comedy under any circumstances
is a bad idea, unless the audience knows in advance that it is a coined use. The wave of too many films on the subject
have threatened to trivialize it as much as anything lately, but an occasional
film like Roman Polanski’s The Pianist exposes their limits. The coined work of comedy applies as much
to Benigni and it does for Hogan’s Heroes. The show has been criticized by many lately, including by TV
Guide Magazine, who supported the show in its time when it sold their
publication, but the series is no more insensitive than any of the other
comedies, because they all were critical hits and that is because people could
separate the program from reality. By
that standard, Hogan’s Heroes could be appreciated again for the comedy
it was, with no evil ideology to it. It
is not great television, but does fall into the “we are trapped and may never
get out of here” type of series television that was simply designed to get
people watching every week. This is
going to be a sensitive subject no matter how you approach it, but if the show
was bad or suspect, we would never hold back in going after it.
The 1.33 X 1 full frame image was shot on film and holds
up very well for its age. The first
episode is shot in black and white, but the rest of the series is in color, and
this color looks really good. The
series was shot by cinematographer Gordon Avil, A.S.C., who had to come up with
an approach that would make the show look distinct for the new color
televisions that had just arrived to the market. With rich reds, blues and browns in particular, he and the art
directors succeeded. The show looks
like no other before it and none that will ever be made again. Credit to Paul Schrader for getting the look
right in his underseen and underrated film about the sad life of Crane, Auto
Focus. That made watching the show
more eerie than anything about The Nazis if you know his story.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sounds good for its age. The laugh tracks show their age, recycled
form radio of the 1930s and 1940s, while the new music and dialogue fare
better, even in this mix. The great
Jerry Fielding did the famous theme song, while Fred Steiner did music for the
later shows. This is cleaned up nicely
and will make fans happy. There are no
extras, but that would be something to consider for future sets. Now, to figure out how the show survived the
limits of its own formula.
- Nicholas Sheffo
