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Things You Didn’t Know about Hogan’s Heroes

Larrylambert
3 min readMay 18, 2023

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I wasn’t much of a fan.

Creative Commons: Espino Family

Some situations seem like they would be difficult to mine humor from. Take a German POW camp during World War II. That’s a tough premise to start with. There are some other elements that came to light later that made Hogan’s Heroes even more dubious to look back fondly upon.

The star of the show, Bob Crane, had a serious dark side. He was a serial womanizer who was into porn and was ultimately murdered in grisly fashion. That’s kind of a tough background for a syndicated comedy to operate in. Still, with that being said, here are some more things you might not have known about Hogan’s Heroes.

1: Sgt, Shultz had a famous catch phrase, “I know nothing!”

And that catch phrase has been picked up by numerous politicians since then.

2: Robert Clary, aka Cpl. Louis LeBeau, went on to play in a number of soap operas.

Well, at least he wasn’t in a German POW camp.

3: Richard Dawson had, perhaps the best post-Hogan’s Heroes career of any of the cast members.

He is most well-known for his turn as the host of “Family Feud.” Things were definitely going in the right direction. He went from a world war to a family feud. A definite downsizing of hostilities.

4: Dawson actually waned the role of Hogan but couldn’t nail an American accent.

An obviously, the hero of the show had to be American and not British.

5: The tagline for the show was, “If you liked World War II…you’ll love Hogan’s Heroes?’”

But remember, this was back in the 60s when tastelessness was allowed.

6: The theme song for the show actually had lyrics.

They went as follows: “Heroes, heroes, husky men of war, Sons of all the heroes, of the war before. We’re all heroes up to our ear-o’s You ask questions, We make suggestions, That’s what we’re heroes…

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Larrylambert
Larrylambert

Written by Larrylambert

You probably don't know my name, but have likely seen my work. I've written for numerous syndicated cartoon strips and my gags have appeared in national pubs.

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