John Banner: Sergeant Schultz of "Hogan's Heroes"

John Banner, who achieved television immortality for his portrayal of the Luftwaffe prison-camp guard Sergeant Schultz in the TV series Hogan's Heroes (1965-71), was born on January, 28, 1910 in Vienna, the capital of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The 28-year-old Banner, who was Jewish, was forced to abandon his homeland after the anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria.

The anschluss (union) of Hitler's Germany and Austria occurred in 1938 while he was engaged in a tour of Switzerland with an acting company. Unable to return to Austria due to Hitler's anti-semitic policies of persecution, he emigrated to the United States as a political refugee.

Soon after reaching the States, Banner -- who was completely ignorant of the English language -- was hired to emcee a musical revue. He had to learn his lines phonetically, but the total immersion paid off in that he rapidly picked up English. His accent and "Nordic" look ironically meant that he was typecast in several films as Nazis during the 1940s. He survived the war playing the very villains who were murdering his family who had been left behind in Austria, all of whom perished in concentration camps.

John Banner served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1942 through 1945.

"I know NOTHING!"

The John Banner who had emigrated to the US weighed a trim 180 lbs., but eventually, he added another 100 lbs. to become the roly-poly character actor that America would come to know and love. The 280-lb. Banner became a character actor who appeared regularly in movies and on TV, specializing in foreign-official types, such the Soviet Ambassador in the Fred MacMurray comedy Kisses for My President (1964).

In 1965, Bing Crosby Productions cast Banner as Sgt. Schultz in the wartime sitcom Hogan's Heroes," a take-off on Billy Widler's Stalag 13 (1953) but with more humor and less drama. The bumbling Dutch uncle that Banner assayed was a continent apart from the wickedly evil Nazis he specialized in during the war.

Spectacularly inept as a guard of Allied prisoners of war, Sgt. Schultz was prone to ignoring the irregularities that transpired in the fictive Stalag 13, bellowing "I know nothing! I see nothing! NOTHING!"

Making Fun of the Holocaust?

In the 2002 movie Auto Focus, a fictionalized biography of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane, Crane's first wife denounces his decision to star in the World War II military comedy on the grounds that it is making fun of the Holocaust. The movie fails to point out that Billy Wilder, another Austrian Jew who escaped Hitler and the Holocaust, had made the movie that Hogan's Heroes was based on, Stalag 17.

John Banner and Werner Klemperer, who played Sergeant Schultz's superior, Colonel Klink, in Hogan's Heroes, were both Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis. Klemperer's father was the famous conductor Otto Klemperer, a German Jew who was persecuted by the Nazis as a "cultural bolzhevik " and had to flee Germany after he was fired from his conducting position and his property was confiscated. Both Banner and Klemperer, fils, were Jewish refugees forced to flee Hitler's Reich who, ironically, would achieve television immortality by playing comical, bumbling Nazis.

John Banner enjoyed the role of Sergeant Schultz but demurred when accused of portraying a "cuddly" Nazi. He told TV Guide, "I see Schultz as the representative of some kind of goodness in every generation."

Along with Werner Klemperer, John Banner co-starred with Bob "Colonel Hogan" Crane in The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968), a bizarre movie "comedy" about a defecting East German athlete. The picture bombed and the trio went back to turning out the highly popular series without losing too much pride or momentum.

After Schultz

After the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes in 1971, Banner was signed for another TV show set in the past, The Chicago Teddy-Bears (1971), which used the Prohibition era as its setting. The series was about an honest man (Dean Jones) in Al Capone's Chicago who owned speak wasy with his Uncle Latzi (John Banner), and was constantly in conflict with his cousin, a gangster, who would stop at nothing to take over the place.

Banner's character Uncle Latzi was a close cousin of Sergeant Schultz, and he was part of a supporting cast that included such veterans as Jamie Farr, Huntz Hall and Mike Mazurki. However, lightning did not strike twice and the series was canceled after 13 episodes.

John Banner died on January 28, 1973, his 63rd birthday, in his hometown of Vienna, Austria. The cause of his death was an abdominal hemorrhage.

He lives on as the inimitable Sgt. Schultz to the legions of Hogan's Heroes fans who now span the generations.

Sources:

An earlier version of this biography appeared originally on the Internet Movie Database