I have never 'gotten' Hogan's Heroes

You're talking to one of them.

 

I had completely forgotten about Granny wrestling the Boston Strong Girl. I loved that scene.

 

I just watched Rosellini's "Rome, Open City" about the resistance to the Nazi's occupying Rome in the days before the War ended (and both sides were getting desperate). It's amazing to me that anyone could have conceived, much less produced a show like Hogan's Heroes 20 years after the war. More amazing - I am abashed to admit - I sometimes found the show amusing.

BTW, compounded irony: Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) was half Jewish. and John Banner (Sgt. Shultz) was born to two Jewish parents.

 

I find it hard to believe that one couldn't find the Schultz a funny and likeable character. I think he was portrayed as having a good heart. All he wanted to do was stay safe and do no harm.

I have personally invoked the "Schultz Defense" on numerous occasions. "I know nutheeng!.. I hear nutheeng!..."

 

Well, considering at the time it was only around twenty years removed from the actual events, and it wasn't a great topic conversation with the survivors, Someone thought, hey, let's create a TV show about a German prison camp and it was a hit must have been quite surprising to some.

My father who lost about everyone in his family and worked for the French underground loved the show, mainly because it portrait the Germens as buffoons, and he enjoyed that very much.

 

Indeed. As was Leon Askin (Burkhaulter), a Viennese Jew, Howard Caine (Hochstetter), who was Jewish-American, and, perhaps most tragically, Robert Clary (LeBeau). The latter being "housed" at Buchenwald while losing all of his immediate family at Aushwitz.* Even Edward Feldman, the show's creator, was Jewish.

Thus, I think it's probably safe to state that many who were involved in this show, and due to their own background, were well aware of the pointedly directed nature and intended "victims" of its satire. Similar to some of Mel Brooks' work.


*And to again refute a common misconception of the show for others who might not be aware: It took place in a Luftwaffe-run POW camp...*not* a "concentration camp" as the media is often wont to incorrectly state.

 

I get HH but I don't get MASH. At all. One of the most boring, dated shows of all time, IMO.

 

I remember my late father watching and enjoying the show. The fact that he spent 4 years as a German POW didn't seem to be a factor.

 

Klemperer was nominated six times and won two consecutive Emmys for his portrayal of Klink. I loved the show when I was a kid, but I didn't appreciate just how excellent Klemperer's characterization of Klink is until I was an adult. I think it's one of the best in TV history.

 

I agree it's a horrible and depressing show in my opinion

 

Hogan's Heroes positively, absolutely had a laugh track in its initial run. Some sitcoms used 4-track mags for their soundtracks, with channel 1 for dialogue, 2 for music, 3 for effects, and 4 for the laugh track, so it's possible that somebody transferred the shows without the laugh track. But they were always intended to have a laugh track.

Klemperer did Broadway and tons of other film & TV roles, so he was an extremely experienced actor at the time he was "Colonel Klink." He looked quite a bit older than Hogan in the show (partly because of being bald), but in reality was only 8 years older.

 

You have to see it in historical context. It was not that bad for most people in the 1960s. I can totally understand why some would find it offensive; at least 7 members of my family were killed by Nazis in Holland in the 1940s, so I'm not exactly a Nazi fan. I thought the show had moments and it was very well-acted, but it's totally a fantasy/spoof. You can't take this any more seriously than you would Mr. Ed (a talking horse) or The Munsters (a suburban family of monsters). It's all silly comedy, not serious at all.

 

I used to chat with him quite frequently at Sardis in the 90's. He used to be there all the time.

 

I'm going from memory here, and its been a while since I've seen them when they last ran on his channel, but I believe when Mark Cuban painstakingly had hi-def transfers of the show done for HDNet way back in 2002, there were some issues with no laugh track in places due to the sources they used (I believe they actually rebuilt things from the ground up in certain instances, and, for whatever reason, as Vidiot suggested, the laugh track was left out). The whole thing was done as a bit of an early test to see how viable it would be to transfer and show old 35mm filmed TV shows in the new high definition broadcast world. I used to have a great online trade article on the whole shebang, but I'll be damned if I can find it on my 'puter.

[And while they were "reformatted" for widescreen, the resulting visual quality was gorgeous, IMHO. I do still happen to have a couple of 'caps on that aforementioned computer that I pilfered from the 'net way back then. ]

I have zero idea if those transfers are still making the rounds anywhere, but I wonder if this might be related to what you saw? The surviving producers of the show, Albert Ruddy and Bernard Fein, won back the show rights last year in a court case, so I honestly don't know who currently uses what in terms of worldwide syndication or high-definition broadcasts. At the time, I believe Cuban/Rysher purchased the broadcast rights outright from Paramount...and then simply did their own thing (i.e. Paramount Home Video also issued their own DVD sets. Laugh track intact there). Though, hi-def episodes were later broadcast on the Universal HD channel as well here in the states. Can't even remember if they were the same transfers -- unlike HDNet's airings, they were edited. Long ago now......


PS - Note to Messrs. Ruddy and Fein: Blu-Ray please.

 

When I was a kid, my friend always wanted to watch HH, which I didn't like. I always disliked Bob Crane for some reason. He always seemed so smarmy. Then when that movie came out about him, Auto Focus, I felt vindicated as a judge of character -- even though I was about 12 at the time (when I was watching HH).

 

Still one of my favorite sitcoms ever.

 

The biggest thing I remembered is that Mark Cuban strongly disliked (and still dislikes) 4x3 shows "pillar-boxed" in an HD frame. As a result, what they did on the Hogan's Heroes shows is they blew them up somewhat, roughly to a 14x9 aspect ratio. So you wound up with a compromise format with a very small black matte on the sides, and cutting off a little of the picture top and bottom, but it somewhat fit a 16x9 monitor:


I thought it was kinda bizarre, but I understood why Cuban disliked seeing large black blanking borders on the sides. I wasn't aware about the lack of laugh track, but I swear, that's just a 4-track thing. My memory is that I encountered the same issue with the Get Smart episodes we mastered, and I just went in and found some masters that still had some levels, then made some notes and used the same settings on the entire series, and they were very consistent episode-to-episode. What's frustrating is quite a few master audio tracks for TV shows are unmarked as to what format they're in, how many tracks, what the levels are supposed to be, and so on, and a lot of them have no setup tones, no nothin'. I think they used them once 50 years ago to make an optical track and just got vaulted after that. I always left notes so that the next poor soul who had to remaster the shows would have a clue as to what we did to mix the levels and get the right playback head stack.

 

Yep...looking at the caps that I snagged years ago, and comparing them to the original 4:3 versions, my initial perception was that they did a few things.

1) Gave us more of the previously unseen side protected area. That is, there's material on the side that's absent from the 4:3 version.

2) Cropped the top and bottom (or tilt-and-scanned it...if you will).

and here's the kicker...

3) Very slightly stretched things a tad as things progress outward. That is, things seem a bit wider than the 4:3 versions as we get closer to the sides...faces, bodies. I think the term is "squatter."

When all is said and done, the HDNet vidcaps I snagged come in somewhere roughly between 14:9 and 15:9, once I removed the thin pillarboxes.


I didn't know that Cuban was anti-pillarbox. Interesting. Ironic, in that HDNet Movies -- his sister station -- strives for and advertises OAR. Must pain him greatly...lol.

 

I'll just add, on number 3 I'd like to slightly amend that. Looking at the vidcaps now, they look "squatter" all the away across (not just the edges)! Some sort of optical distortion during the transfer process?

(or maybe they did slightly digitally stretch everything a tad)

 

I agree that you can't take "The Munsters" seriously. No family of monsters would live in the suburbs - monsters are city folk!

 

The Munsters is actually a pretty funny show if you can accept it in that context and just suspend your disbelief for half an hour. It's as silly as a cartoon. But... there's a difference between being silly and being outright stupid.

Cuban strikes me as a guy who's very used to getting his way about 99% of the time, even when he's wrong.

 

Having revisited the show in recent years, I find that, for me, it still delivers the laughs. Yes, it's corny and formulaic, and certainly is not the place to look for any serious insight into the war years, but in sheer comedy terms, I do enjoy it.

This, to me, gives the show a sort of unspoken element that I admire. Also, am I correct in thinking that Ivan Dixon was one of the first African-American actors to play a sitcom role in which his race wasn't an issue and/or wasn't played for laughs?

 

That was how TV seemed to work back then. 1/2 hour comedies were based upon some group or somebody being an bumbling idiot.

Beverly Hillbillies: the title is self-explanatory
Green Acres: City people act like bumbling idiots in the country
Munsters: Frankenstein/freak/goth family acts like bumbling idiots
Hogan's Heroes: German POW Camp officers act like bumbling idiots
Gilligan's Island: Seven castaways act like bumbling idiots
Monkees: Fake rock band acts like bumbling idiots
I Love Lucy: Lucy is the Idiot personified

 

I think Rochester on Jack benny's show was first, but I guess you might say his race was an issue, since he was a 'driver'.
Dixon was before Greg Morris and Cosby, I think.

 

yea, Bob Denver's whole career was based on being an idiot. Typecasting he regretted I'm sure.