At dinner Saturday night, the topic of crap TV shows we watched in syndication came up. For some reason, I got kind of curious about “Hogan’s Heros“:
- How many episodes were there? (168; the pilot was black and white, the rest in color.)
- Who is still alive? Basically, nobody.
We all know about Bob Crane. No need to rehash that here.
Werner Klemperer died of cancer in 2000.
John “Sgt. Schultz” Banner died two years after Hogan went off the air. He was only 63.
Robert “Corporal LeBeau” Clary is still alive, and the only surviving original cast member.
Richard Dawson died in 2012. I didn’t realize he was Diana Dors’ second husband. (And, as a side note, the Diana Dors/Alan Lake story is a good one if you happen to be looking for a massive dose of sad this holiday season. I knew a little about Dors and Lake, as they were apparently close friends of the Kray brothers.)
Larry “Sergeant Carter” Hovis died in 2003. What I did not know: he was teaching drama at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos (just down the road from Austin) at the time of his death.
Ivan Dixon died in 2008. It sounds like he had a fascinating career both before and after. Especially after:
From 1970 to 1993, Dixon worked primarily as a television director on such series and TV-movies as Trouble Man, The Waltons, The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, Magnum, P.I., and The A-Team. He also directed the controversial 1973 feature film The Spook Who Sat By the Door, based on Sam Greenlee’s novel of the same name, about the first black CIA agent, who takes his espionage knowledge and uses it to lead a black guerrilla operation in Chicago.
That’s another movie I’d like to see.
And Kenneth Washington, who replaced Ivan Dixon in the last season, is also still alive.
