Hogan's Heroes

1. Hogan’s Heroes and the Late 1960s America

Chapter 1 Hogan’s Heroes and the Late 1960s America 19 Hogan’s Heroes premiered in CBS’s Friday night lineup on September 17, 1965, with the pilot episode, “The Informer .” The pilot differed from the rest of the run in a number of significant ways. The pilot episode was shot in black and white.1 Of course, the pilot episode is also what was used to sell the network on developing the show. Therefore it is not difficult to appreciate it as a primer for all parties as to how the series, its characters, its premise, and its audience will be conceived and addressed. Arguably, the pilot episode pushes the absurdities of the series’ premise much further than any of the 167 subsequent episodes. The opening credits of “The Informer” include the dateline “Germany, 1942.” Lest the viewer suspect anything serious from the show, the opening martial percussion immediately shifts to the series’ much more lighthearted theme song. Hogan’s Heroes reveals the discursive cards with which it will play by introducing the combination of trappings of the German war machine and the comedic soundtrack. Once the credits introduce the main players, Sergeant Schultz is shown performing what will become his usual prisoner count, which falls short. A prisoner is missing, and Schultz appeals to Hogan for help. The prison- 20 Chapter 1 ers stall the count until a replacement prisoner shows up. In case the dissonance has gone unnoticed, within ten seconds of the disappearance of the credits, the laugh track is employed for the first time. The rest of the episode must then concentrate on establishing what is so laughable about this situation and which social codes are going to be confronted. None of these confrontations can be set up without the primary conceit of the series—namely, that the Nazi Germans are buffoons on whose bodies most of the humor will be played out. Minutes into the episode, the unruly group of prisoners distract the slow-witted Sergeant Schultz so a prisoner can escape under the fence. At that point the pilot episode also establishes the conceit that assures mutual cooperation between Schultz and the prisoners. The sergeant of the guard’s fear that an escape would land him in trouble with his superiors motivates him, not only to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the prisoners’ activities, but also to turn to them in times of need. The conceit disrupts the hegemonic understanding of military service that presumes that all uniformed service personnel are ideologically committed to the wars into which they are sent. Shortly after introducing Schultz, the episode calls on two separate plotlines rooted in film history to anchor itself in a narrative tradition. The first is a plot by the camp officials to place a spy among the prisoners. This story line is drawn directly from Billy Wilder’s 1953 film Stalag 17. The second is the perceived officer solidarity between Colonels Hogan and Klink. This trope, common to many combat films, was animated most thoroughly in Jean Renoir’s canonical antiwar POW film, The Grand Illusion (1937). Hogan’s Heroes exploits this narrative device in order to allow Hogan to evade Klink’s attempts to control the prisoners and to find cover for own his sabotage plans. Because of their shared stripes and Hogan’s status as senior POW officer, he has constant access to Klink’s office and to Klink’s psyche. Almost every one of the subsequent 167 episodes will 21 Hogan’s Heroes and Late 1960s America depend on Klink’s trust in and dependency on Hogan. The humor comes in each episode as Hogan abuses this trust. The rest of the episode is organized around revealing the range of gimmicks and tools with which the prisoners will thwart the Nazi war machine, each of which draws its own laugh track. These include a coffeepot phone-tapping system, a watchdog delivery vehicle used as a smuggling device, a tunnel underneath the doghouse, and a flagpole displaying the Nazi banner but serving as a radio antenna for the prisoners. The episode also introduces the frequently employed brief sequence of Sergeant Kinchloe making contact with a British submarine (which is obviously a toy vessel in a bathtub). The narrative of “The Informer” offers a corrective to Wilder ’s much bleaker Stalag 17. Here Hogan’s gang is fully aware From left: LeBeau (Robert Clary), Hogan...