Read Online Crane by Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer
Ads: Link
nominations and awards because, in between golfing, sipping martinis, and smoking marijuana, the medics kept expressing how awful war is. The critics loved it!
The war in Vietnam has spawned a lot of drama—
Platoon, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Drive, He Said,
and
Coming Home
—but Hollywood has never found any humor in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Maybe one day we’ll get the wacky and zany hijinks of “Ho’s Heroes.”
The truth is that the producer of
Hogan’s Heroes,
Edward H. Feldman, and many of the directors, writers, and cast members were Jewish. Robert Clary, who played LeBeau, was in a concentration camp. He had a number tattooed on his forearm. The actors who played the Germans—Klink, Schultz, Burkhalter, and Hochstetter—were all Jewish. They caught the humor and cashed the paycheck. Werner Klemperer, a real liberal, won two Emmys playing the befuddled camp Kommandant, Colonel Klink, even while he spent much of his free time protesting against the Vietnam War.
The San Fernando Valley, where my family lived, and which many of L.A.’s Westside residents already viewed as foreign soil, supported the third-largest population of Jews in the world after Israel and New York City. During the High Holy Days in September or October, my high school was a ghost town. The reason I mention this is to point out that some of my Jewish classmates were heavily influenced by what was obviously being said at home. That sometimes put me on the receiving end of looks of disapproval, disappointment, or anxiety. “Hey, that’s the kid whose father’s in the show making fun of concentration camps. Get him!” I felt like there was a swastika tattooed on my forehead long before Charlie Manson thought of it as a fashion statement.
I had been in love since the third grade with a girl named Karen Nudell, the smartest, cutest girl in my class. In fact, when my parents were searching for a name for my youngest sister, they settled on Karen after I suggested it as a tribute to the girl who owned my nine-year-old heart. But would Karen Nudell ever want any part of a goy whose father was an actor on a show that mined laughs from the Luftwaffe? I think not.
Producer Edward H. Feldman’s premise was that however unreal the series appeared to some critics and viewers, everyone involved in the production was to play it as though the situations were real. If the viewers could weather the laugh track behind a prison camp and care about the characters, the Allied soldiers, and their plight, then they were onboard. And whether you liked
Hogan’s Heroes
or not, it was a landmark idea, with a good cast, funny scripts, and a respectful attitude toward its audience, which is why it’s still playing fifty years later.
My dad had relied on himself—his intuition, his judgment, his sense of the room—throughout his radio career at KNX. When he started
Hogan’s
it was no longer a case of microsecond processing of ideas and speaking as it had been on the radio. He needed to trust the person at the top of the pyramid, and that person was Feldman. Feldman had extensive experience in television production, responsible for hiring and firing actors, writers, directors, costumers, and editors. Based on his experience on the pilot episode that sold the series, my dad invested his trust in Feldman, who ultimately was the barometer of class and taste for the show. Ed Feldman hired New York stage actors; movie veterans; some old-timers in cinematography, wardrobe, and makeup; some TV war-horses in writing and directing; and a pair of young film editors for pacing. Feldman had my dad’s complete trust, but
Hogan’s
would be the onlyendeavor my dad undertook in which he trusted someone else more than himself. After
Hogan’s
run, the creative trust reverted solely to my dad and his own instincts, and that’s where his trouble began.
Bob Crane, Ivan Dixon, and Bobby Crane on
Hogan’s Heroes
set, Hollywood, 1969 (author’s collection).
My
The war in Vietnam has spawned a lot of drama—
Platoon, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Drive, He Said,
and
Coming Home
—but Hollywood has never found any humor in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Maybe one day we’ll get the wacky and zany hijinks of “Ho’s Heroes.”
The truth is that the producer of
Hogan’s Heroes,
Edward H. Feldman, and many of the directors, writers, and cast members were Jewish. Robert Clary, who played LeBeau, was in a concentration camp. He had a number tattooed on his forearm. The actors who played the Germans—Klink, Schultz, Burkhalter, and Hochstetter—were all Jewish. They caught the humor and cashed the paycheck. Werner Klemperer, a real liberal, won two Emmys playing the befuddled camp Kommandant, Colonel Klink, even while he spent much of his free time protesting against the Vietnam War.
The San Fernando Valley, where my family lived, and which many of L.A.’s Westside residents already viewed as foreign soil, supported the third-largest population of Jews in the world after Israel and New York City. During the High Holy Days in September or October, my high school was a ghost town. The reason I mention this is to point out that some of my Jewish classmates were heavily influenced by what was obviously being said at home. That sometimes put me on the receiving end of looks of disapproval, disappointment, or anxiety. “Hey, that’s the kid whose father’s in the show making fun of concentration camps. Get him!” I felt like there was a swastika tattooed on my forehead long before Charlie Manson thought of it as a fashion statement.
I had been in love since the third grade with a girl named Karen Nudell, the smartest, cutest girl in my class. In fact, when my parents were searching for a name for my youngest sister, they settled on Karen after I suggested it as a tribute to the girl who owned my nine-year-old heart. But would Karen Nudell ever want any part of a goy whose father was an actor on a show that mined laughs from the Luftwaffe? I think not.
Producer Edward H. Feldman’s premise was that however unreal the series appeared to some critics and viewers, everyone involved in the production was to play it as though the situations were real. If the viewers could weather the laugh track behind a prison camp and care about the characters, the Allied soldiers, and their plight, then they were onboard. And whether you liked
Hogan’s Heroes
or not, it was a landmark idea, with a good cast, funny scripts, and a respectful attitude toward its audience, which is why it’s still playing fifty years later.
My dad had relied on himself—his intuition, his judgment, his sense of the room—throughout his radio career at KNX. When he started
Hogan’s
it was no longer a case of microsecond processing of ideas and speaking as it had been on the radio. He needed to trust the person at the top of the pyramid, and that person was Feldman. Feldman had extensive experience in television production, responsible for hiring and firing actors, writers, directors, costumers, and editors. Based on his experience on the pilot episode that sold the series, my dad invested his trust in Feldman, who ultimately was the barometer of class and taste for the show. Ed Feldman hired New York stage actors; movie veterans; some old-timers in cinematography, wardrobe, and makeup; some TV war-horses in writing and directing; and a pair of young film editors for pacing. Feldman had my dad’s complete trust, but
Hogan’s
would be the onlyendeavor my dad undertook in which he trusted someone else more than himself. After
Hogan’s
run, the creative trust reverted solely to my dad and his own instincts, and that’s where his trouble began.
Bob Crane, Ivan Dixon, and Bobby Crane on
Hogan’s Heroes
set, Hollywood, 1969 (author’s collection).
My
Similar Books
