The year was 1991, and Werner Klemperer sat on a velvet-backed chair in a dimly lit television studio. He looked nothing like the bumbling, monocle-wearing commandant the world knew as Colonel Klink. He was elegant, his posture was perfect, and his voice carried the refined, mid-Atlantic cadence of a man who spent more time in opera houses than Hollywood soundstages. He was there to discuss his long career, but as usually happened, the conversation drifted back to Stalag 13.
A woman in the third row stood up during the Q&A segment. She asked a question that brought a sudden, mischievous glint to Werner’s eyes. She wanted to know if anyone had ever truly mistaken the show for reality, or if the satire was always clear to the audience. Werner leaned forward, adjusted his glasses, and let out a soft, dry chuckle that signaled a story was coming.
He began to describe a night in the late 1960s. The show was at the height of its popularity. Werner was in Chicago for a musical engagement, a series of concerts where he was performing as a narrator. He was staying at a high-end hotel, enjoying the anonymity that came with removing the uniform and the accent. He was just another sophisticated traveler in a tailored suit, or so he thought.
As he walked through the lobby toward the elevators, he noticed a man watching him from behind a newspaper. The man was middle-aged, wearing a beige trench coat, and looked incredibly serious. Every time Werner moved, the man’s eyes followed. When Werner finally stepped into the elevator, the man moved quickly, sticking his hand between the closing doors to jump inside.
Werner admitted to the audience that his heart hammered against his ribs. Being a Jewish man who had fled Germany in the 1930s, he still carried a deep-seated instinctual caution. The man didn’t press a floor button. He just stood there, staring at Werner with an expression of intense, concentrated frustration.
Just as the elevator began to rise, the man leaned in close.
The man didn’t ask for an autograph, and he didn’t yell about the war. Instead, he hissed in a low, conspiratorial whisper, “The tunnels, Colonel! They are under the bunkhouse! For the love of God, man, look under the bunkhouse!”
Werner said he froze for a solid three seconds, his mind racing to catch up with the reality of the situation. He realized this man wasn’t a threat; he was a deeply concerned viewer who was genuinely losing sleep over Klink’s incompetence. The man grabbed Werner’s arm—not aggressively, but with the desperation of a friend trying to save a sinking ship—and told him that if he just moved the stove in Bunkhouse 2, the whole “Hogan problem” would be solved once and for all.
When Werner told this story during the interview, the studio audience erupted. But the best part, he explained, was what happened when he returned to the set in Hollywood the following Monday. He walked into the makeup trailer where Bob Crane was already getting his hair styled and John Banner was having his belt adjusted.
Werner stood in the middle of the room and recounted the “tactical briefing” he had received in the Chicago elevator. Bob Crane started laughing so hard he actually fell out of his chair, nearly taking the makeup artist with him. John Banner, in his thick, unmistakable accent, let out a booming laugh and shouted, “Werner, did you tell him that I see nothing? Because if you find the tunnels, I lose my job!”
The story spread through the crew like wildfire. Within two hours, the director, the grips, and even the craft services staff were in on the joke. The crew decided that if the fans were that invested in Klink’s failure, they had to lean into it even harder.
One of the prop masters went out and found a small, decorative jar. He taped a piece of paper to it that read: “The Colonel Klink Tactical Strategy Fund.” He placed it right on the table in the middle of the Stalag 13 courtyard set. Every time Werner missed an “obvious” clue in a scene or walked right over a hidden trapdoor without noticing, a crew member would walk over and loudly drop a nickel into the jar.
Werner recalled how the atmosphere on set shifted from professional to hilariously chaotic. During rehearsals, if Richard Dawson or Robert Clary saw Werner looking a bit too competent, they would stop the take. Dawson would walk over, lean into Werner’s ear, and mimic the man from the elevator, whispering, “The tunnels, Colonel! Look under the bunkhouse!”
It became a running gag that lasted for the rest of the season. The writers even started writing “Klink-isms” that were intentionally more oblivious than before, just to see if they could provoke more “advice” from the public. Werner told the interviewer that he began to view the character not just as a comedic foil, but as a public service to the frustrated viewers of America.
He laughed about the irony of his life—a man who had escaped the very real terrors of the Nazi regime, now being coached on how to be a better Nazi by a suburban dad in a trench coat who just wanted the show to make more sense.
The “Tactical Strategy Fund” eventually collected about thirty dollars in nickels and dimes. On the final day of filming that season, the cast used the money to buy a massive cake for the crew. They had the baker write a special message on the frosting in bright blue letters.
It didn’t say “Congratulations” or “Great Season.” It simply said: “Check Under The Bunkhouse.”
Werner ended the story by saying that he never saw the man in the elevator again, but he always hoped the man watched the next few episodes and felt like he had finally “gotten through” to the Commandant. It was that specific brand of absurdity, Werner noted, that made the show a joy to work on. They weren’t just making a sitcom; they were participating in a strange, shared delusion with millions of people who really, really wanted Klink to just look at the floor for once.
He realized then that the humor didn’t come from the uniform or the setting, but from the universal human desire to scream at the television when someone is being particularly dim-witted. Werner took it as the highest compliment of his acting career.
If he could make a man in an elevator that stressed out over a fictional tunnel, he knew he was doing his job exactly right.
Does it ever surprise you how much people can blur the lines between an actor and their character?
