Trivia: American actor Bob Crane is best remembered for playing the crafty POW Col. Hogan on the 1960s television comedy Hogan's Heroes, but he also played leads in a few films during the '50s and '60s. Crane was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. He began his career as a drummer and played with dance bands and a symphony orchestra. He also worked as a radio announcer at various stations around the U.S. before hosting a morning talk show in Hollywood. Next Crane began appearing regularly on the Donna Reed Show. In 1978, he was mysteriously murdered, and the case remains unsolved. He was married to Sigrid Valdis, an actress.

Trivia: Actor Werner Klemperer seemed destined for a career as a classical musician in his native Germany; his father was legendary orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer, and his mother was an opera singer. Otto Klemperer fled the Nazis in 1933 and secured a job with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, then sent for his wife and children. Trained in piano, trumpet and violin, young Werner never lost his love of music, but decided in the early '40s to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. A naturalized American citizen, Klemperer worked in Maurice Evans' special services unit in World War II, which gave Werner invaluable training before all sorts of audiences. Completely bald in his mid 20s, Klemperer had little problem securing theatrical work as older continental types, yet he yearned to broaden his range. To do this, he completely surpressed his German accent, the better to play such all-American character roles as the timorous press agent in the 1957 Cary Grant film Kiss Them for Me (1957). The capture of fugitive Nazi official Adolph Eichmann in 1960 sparked a renewal of interest in war films, and soon Klemperer found himself playing Eichmann (whom he vaguely resembled) in the 1961 quickie Operation Eichmann. He also essayed a suitably slimy role as a former Nazi jurist on trial for war crimes in 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg. Try though he might to break free of the stereotype, Klemperer was stuck in Teutonic roles, so he resigned himself to recultivating his German accent and worked steadily throughout the '60s. A low-comedy variation of Klemperer's standard character made him an international TV favorite: the actor played the heel-clicking, imperious and incredibly stupid Colonel Klink on the popular sitcom Hogan's Heroes from 1965 through 1970. In the '70s, Klemperer returned to his musical roots as a sometimes performer at the Metropolitan Opera, and as a lecturer/narrator for dozens of American symphony orchestras. Having spent most of his professional career chilling the audience's marrow as the archetypal Nazi officer, Werner Klemperer was the soul of geniality as the jovial narrator of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf at regional kiddie concerts of the '80s and '90s.

Trivia: Actor John Banner was forced out of his native Austria in 1938 when Hitler marched in. Though most familiar to filmgoers and TV viewers as a man of considerable heft, he was a trim 180 pounds when, while touring with an acting troupe in Switzerland, he found he couldn't return to Austria because he was Jewish. Banner came to America as a refugee; though unable to speak a word of English, he was almost immediately hired as emcee for a musical revue, From Vienna, for which he had to learn all his lines phonetically. Picking up the language rapidly, Banner was cast in several films of the 1940s, starting with Pacific Blackout. Because of his accent and Teutonic features, he most often played Nazi spies -- a grim task, in that Banner's entire family in Austria was wiped out in the concentration camps. Tipping the scales at 280 pounds in the 1950s, Banner worked steadily as a character man in films and on television; he can be seen as a variety of foreign-official types on such vintage TV series as The Adventures of Superman and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. In 1965, Banner was cast as Sgt. Schultz in the long-running wartime sitcom Hogan's Heroes. A far cry from the villainous Nazis he'd played in the 1940s, Schultz was a pixieish, lovable blimp of a man who'd rather have been working as a toymaker than spending the war guarding American POWS, and who, to protect his own skin, overlooked the irregularities occurring in Stalag 13 (which as every TV fan knows was Colonel Hogan's secret headquarters for American counterespionage) by bellowing "I know nothing! I see nothing! Nothing!" John Banner enjoyed playing Schultz, but bristled whenever accused of portraying a cuddly Nazi: "I see Schultz as the representative of some kind of goodness in every generation," the actor told TV Guide in 1967. As to the paradox of an Austrian Jew playing a representative of Hitler's Germany, Banner replied, "Who can play Nazis better than us Jews?" Or who could play them funnier than John Banner?

Trivia: Trained in British repertory, actor Richard Dawson achieved prominence in the late '50s as a cabaret and TV comedian. Arriving in the U.S. in 1961, Dawson made the variety-show rounds with an act consisting largely of quickie celebrity impressions. One of his first acting assignment was as Peter Sellers' takeoff Racy Tracy Rattigan in a 1963 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. A solid dramatic role as a military prisoner in King Rat led to a longer stint as resourceful cockney POW Peter Newkirk on the popular sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971). After appearing as a regular on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Dawson settled into his true niche as a wisecracking game-show host. From 1976 through 1985, he emceed TV's The Family Feud, winning an Emmy Award for his troubles (he later resumed his Family Feud hosting chores in the 1994 syndicated version). Fittingly enough, Richard Dawson's first feature-film role after Feud was as the smarmy host of a futuristic life-or-death quiz program in Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Running Man (1989).

Trivia: Forceful African American leading man Ivan Dixon first commanded notice from theatergoers for his performance in the 1957 Broadway play The Cave Dwellers. He entered films as Sidney Poiter's double and stand-in with Something of Value (1957) and The Defiant Ones (1958), ultimately sharing scenes with Poitier in Porgy and Bess (1959) and Raisin in the Sun (1961). In 1964's Nothing But a Man, Dixon starred as Duff Anderson, an irresponsible Alabama railroad worker whose late-blooming maturity forms the nucleus of the film. Dixon's TV work includes the role of Kinchloe on the POW sitcom Hogan's Heroes and his Emmy-nominated starring role on the 1967 dramatic special The Private War of Olly Winter. In his later years, Ivan Dixon remained active as a director and a performer: he helmed the theatrical features Trouble Man (1972) and The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1992), such TV movies as Love is Not Enough and Percy and Thunder, and several episodes of the TV adventure series Hawaiian Heat (1984). Dixon died at age 76 in March 2008.

Trivia: Though he would eventually rise to fame as demolitions expert Sgt. Carter on the classic comedy series Hogan's Heroes, singer/actor Larry Hovis originally came into show business as a singer. A Washington native who was raised in Texas, Hovis vocalized with his sister Joan before joining the popular Houston quartet the Mascots in the 1950s. Coming in first in a local talent contest earned the Mascots some television exposure on Arthur Godfrey's popular television show, and soon thereafter Hovis was hosting his own daytime television show. Moving into acting in his early twenties, he appeared in numerous stage productions, as well as continuing songwriting, which eventually led to a recording contract with Capitol and a subsequent solo album entitled My Heart Belongs to Only You. Small-time stage work became big-time with Broadway appearances in The Billy Barnes Revue and From A to Z in the late '50s, and by the time Hovis packed his bags for California at the age of 28, his standup performances and his screenplay for the comedy Out of Sight were gaining him quite a reputation. Shortly after that reputation landed him a gig on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., he embarked on a six-year run in the breakout television comedy hit Hogan's Heroes. Hovis followed his stint on Hogan's Heroes with a high-profile job as a writer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, and though he was indeed a writer on the show's Emmy-winning 1968 season, he missed out on winning because his name was mistakenly omitted from the writing credits. Balancing appearances in film and television with a prominent role on the television game show The Liar's Club in the 1970s, Hovis would later tour with the first national road show of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. In his later years, Hovis returned to Texas to teach acting at Southwest Texas University (now Texas State University) while continuing to appear frequently on-stage. On September 9, 2003, Larry Hovis died in Austin, TX, following an extended battle with cancer. He was 67.

Trivia: Austrian actor Leon Askin began his stage career in Germany, then left Europe as abruptly as possible when Hitler came to power. He reactivated his career in New York in 1940, becoming an American citizen three years later. In 1952, Askin made his first Hollywood film, Assignment Paris; though not quite as heavy or menacing-looking as he'd be in the 1960s, the actor was typecast from his first movie as a villain, usually fascist. One of his best early film roles was in Road to Bali (1953), a Hope-Crosby farce in which he played a South Seas witch doctor named Ramayana. Askin later appeared in Danny Kaye's Knock on Wood (1954), this time (typically) cast as a trenchcoated Teutonic spy. More of Askin's "shifty foreigner" characterizations could be enjoyed in The Bowery Boys' Spy Chasers (1955), Billy Wilder's One Two Three (1961), and the notorious political sex farce John Goldfarb Please Come Home (1964), in which the actor played a turbaned arab. As a Nazi officer (surprise, surprise) in What Did You Do In the War, Daddy?, Askin dropped dead in anticipation of an evening in bed with a pretty young Italian girl, whereupon the local underground was forced to tote his corpulent corpse all around town to hide the fact that he'd expired. Active in films and as a drama teacher and lecturer into the 1980s, Leon Askin is best known to American TV addicts as the gross (and gross-kopfed) SS officer Burkhalter on the 1960s sitcom Hogan's Heroes.

Trivia: Michael Fox played character parts--usually villains--in scores of television shows and in more than 100 films, mostly during the '50s and '60s. Fans of the CBS daily serial The Bold and the Beautiful will remember him for having played Saul Feinberg from 1987-1986. Born and raised in Yonkers, New York and first made his name on Broadway starring opposite Lillian Gish in The Story of Mary Stuart. Fox made his film debut in films such as Voodoo Tiger and Backhawks (both 1952). Later in his career, Fox founded the Theater East actors organization. Fox passed away at the Motion Picture Home, Woodland Hills, California. The 75-year-old was suffering from pneumonia at the time.

Trivia: Actress Sigrid Valdis was best known for two achievements -- her ongoing portrayal of the alluring blonde secretary Hilda on the WWII-themed sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971), and her off-camera marriage to troubled series star Bob Crane. Born Patricia Olson in Bakersfield, CA, in 1940, she took Sigrid Valdis as a stage name, then ascended through the ranks of print model and big-screen ingenue (in such mid-'60s films as Our Man Flint and Marriage on the Rocks) before landing the Hogan's assignment that brought about her greatest recognition. Valdis remained with the series from 1966 until it wrapped in 1971, and married Bob Crane in 1970, with an on-set wedding. The marriage officially lasted until Crane's homicide in 1978. In later years, Valdis retired from film and television activity, then died of lung cancer after several decades of inactivity in October 2007. Maria Bello portrayed Valdis in Paul Schrader's biopic of Crane, Auto Focus (2002).