The studio lights are low, casting long shadows across the room as Richard Dawson leans back in a plush velvet chair. This isn’t the high-energy, “Survey says!” version of Richard that the world would come to know on Family Feud. This is the veteran actor, years after the gates of Stalag 13 had been dismantled, reflecting on a life spent in front of the lens.
The interviewer reaches into a small wooden crate on the table between them and pulls out a dented, aluminum coffee pot. It’s unremarkable to anyone else, but as soon as Richard sees it, a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. He leans forward, his eyes brightening with that sharp, mischievous glint that always meant trouble for the directors of Hogan’s Heroes.
“You know where that’s from,” the interviewer says, more of a statement than a question.
Richard chuckles, a low, gravelly sound. He reaches out and taps the metal. “That pot. That bloody pot was the bane of Edward Feldman’s existence. We were filming an episode in the middle of Season 3, I think. We were all exhausted. You have to understand, we did over thirty episodes a year back then. It was a factory, but a factory filled with the most brilliant, eccentric lunatics you’ve ever met.”
He settles back, the memories clearly flooding in. He describes the set of the barracks—the smell of stale tobacco, the sawdust on the floor, and the biting chill of the Desilu North Hollywood lot that was supposed to pass for a German winter.
“We were doing a scene where Schultz—the wonderful, irreplaceable John Banner—was supposed to come in and catch us hovering over a secret radio hidden in the coffee pot. The script was standard. Schultz was supposed to be suspicious, we were supposed to distract him with some nonsense about a new blend of beans, and then he’d get bribed with a chocolate bar. Simple, right?”
Richard pauses, his smile widening. “But the air was heavy that day. John was in a particularly jolly mood, which was dangerous. When John got the giggles, the whole production was in peril. I looked at him standing there in that heavy overcoat, and I saw his eyes twinkling. I decided, right then, that we weren’t going to get this take in one go.”
The interviewer leans in, sensing the shift in the story. Richard describes how the director was screaming about the light fading and the budget running over. The tension was palpable.
“I looked at Robert Clary, and I gave him a tiny wink. He knew. We all knew. I took a deep breath, waited for the ‘Action’ cue, and waited for John to stomp through that door.”
The door to the barracks flew open with the familiar, heavy thud that signaled Sergeant Schultz’s arrival. John Banner marched in, his chest puffed out, trying his absolute best to look like a man of authority. He looked at the coffee pot, then at us, and opened his mouth to deliver the classic line about how he “saw nothing.”
Instead of waiting for him to speak, I leaned in very close—entirely too close for a prisoner and a guard—and I didn’t use Newkirk’s voice. I used this absurd, high-pitched, nasal Cockney accent I’d been practicing to annoy the crew. I looked him dead in the eye and whispered, “Sergeant, would you like to know the secret ingredient in the brew? It’s distilled essence of Bavarian giggle-water.”
John froze. You could see the internal struggle happening behind his eyes. His jaw tightened. His cheeks started to puff out like a bellows. He was trying to swallow the laugh, but it was already too late. A small, high-pitched “hiccup” escaped his throat, and that was the end of the world as we knew it.
John didn’t just laugh; he imploded. He doubled over, and because he was a man of considerable carriage, his center of gravity shifted. He stumbled forward, his hand reaching out for the bunk to steady himself, but he missed. He ended up face-first in a pile of prop blankets, his boots kicking in the air like a flipped beetle.
The barracks went from a professional film set to a riot in three seconds. Robert Clary was the first to go. He let out a shriek of laughter that sounded like a tea kettle and literally fell off his stool. Larry Hovis was trying to stay in character, clutching his clipboard to his face to hide his mouth, but his entire body was shaking so hard the clipboard was rattling like a snare drum.
Even Bob Crane, who usually tried to keep us on track so we could all go home, lost his grip. He leaned against the pillar and just slid down to the floor, covering his eyes.
But the real chaos was the crew. The cameraman, a grizzled veteran who had seen everything, was laughing so hard he actually bumped the tripod, sending the frame tilting toward the ceiling. The sound mixer’s headphones were probably vibrating off his ears because of the sheer volume of the noise.
In the middle of all this, the director, Gene Reynolds, comes stomping onto the set. He’s purple in the face. He’s shouting, “We are losing the light! This is costing us five thousand dollars a minute!”
But then he looked at John. John was still face-down in the blankets, making these muffled, wheezing noises. Every time he tried to pull himself up, he’d catch a glimpse of me—I was just standing there with a perfectly straight face, looking confused—and he’d collapse back down.
Finally, Werner Klemperer—Colonel Klink himself—walked onto the set to see what the hold-up was. He was in full uniform, monocle adjusted, looking every bit the stern Prussian. He took one look at the heap of laughing men on the floor, looked at the director, then looked at me.
He didn’t break. He just sighed, adjusted his monocle, and said in that perfect Klink voice, “Schultz, you are a disgrace to the Luftwaffe. I am going to have you sent to the Eastern Front, but first, I am going to find out what is so funny.”
And then, Werner started to smirk. Once the Colonel cracked, it was over. We spent the next forty-five minutes trying to reset. Every time John looked at me, he’d start “jingling.” That was what we called it. His belt buckle and his equipment would rattle because his belly was shaking with suppressed laughter. We’d hear the jingle-jingle-jingle of his gear, and we’d all start howling again.
The crew eventually gave up. They shut down the lights and told us to go have a drink and come back when we were “civilized.” We never did get that take right that evening. We had to film the whole thing the next morning, but even then, if you look closely at the actual episode, you can see John’s shoulders shaking.
People think of us as just a sitcom cast, but we were a family that stayed sane by making each other lose our minds. That coffee pot represents a day where we didn’t care about the script or the war or the ratings. We just cared about making a big, beautiful man like John Banner laugh until he couldn’t stand up.
It’s the best way I can think of to spend a Tuesday afternoon.
In the end, I think the real “Hogan’s Heroes” were the ones who could find a reason to laugh when the cameras were off and the world felt a bit too serious.
Who is the one person in your life who can make you break character no matter how hard you try to stay serious?
