Interviewer: John, looking back at Hogan’s Heroes, people always ask about the comedy, but for you, it must have been a bit surreal.

You were a Jewish man who fled Austria in 1938, yet you became the most famous German soldier in the world. How did you navigate that?

Banner: (Laughs warmly) It is the great irony of my life, my friend. Every morning I would go into the wardrobe department, and I would see that uniform.

That heavy grey wool. The helmet. The insignias.

He points to a small prop on the table—a weathered replica of his Sergeant’s cap from the set.

Banner: You know, I always loved Schultz. I had to. If I did not love him, the audience would never have loved him.

He was not a villain; he was a man who wanted to survive the day and perhaps find a nice piece of strudel.

But being recognized? That was the trick. You have to remember, in the mid-sixties, the war was still a very fresh memory for many people.

I would go to the grocery store in Los Angeles, just a normal man buying milk or bread, and people would freeze.

They would look at my face—this big, round, smiling face—and you could see the gears turning in their heads.

“Is that him? Is that the man from the Stalag?”

I remember one afternoon specifically. I was at a very nice restaurant in Beverly Hills.

I was dressed in a fine suit, feeling very much like John Banner, the actor. No uniform. No “I see nothing.”

I was sitting there with my wife, enjoying a quiet meal, when I noticed a family at the table next to us.

They had a young son, maybe six or seven years old. The boy was staring at me with his mouth wide open.

He wasn’t eating his dinner. He was just vibrating with excitement.

His father noticed and looked over at me, then back at his son. He whispered something to the boy, and the boy’s eyes went even wider.

The father stood up and started walking toward our table. He looked very serious, very determined.

I thought to myself, “Oh boy, here we go. Is he going to complain about the show? Is he upset that we make fun of such a dark time?”

The father reached our table, cleared his throat, and looked me right in the eye.

Then he said the line.

The father leaned down and whispered, “Sir, my son is convinced that you are currently on a top-secret undercover mission and that Colonel Hogan is likely hiding under our table right now.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

The father was smiling, but the little boy? He was dead serious.

Before I could say a word, the boy crawled off his chair, walked over to our table, and actually lifted the long white tablecloth to peek underneath.

The entire restaurant went silent. People stopped chewing their steaks.

They were all watching this little kid looking for an Allied saboteur in the middle of a five-star dining room.

When he didn’t find Bob Crane or Robert Clary hiding behind my legs, he looked up at me, completely heartbroken.

He looked like he was about to cry and said, “Where is he? Did Klink catch him?”

Now, this is the moment where you have a choice as an actor.

You can be the “professional” who explains that it’s just a television show filmed on a soundstage in Culver City.

Or, you can be Schultz.

I looked at the boy, I put my finger to my lips, and I gave him that look—the one where my eyes go wide and my cheeks puff out like a balloon.

I leaned in and whispered loud enough for the surrounding tables to hear, “Shhh! I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”

The boy’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. He started jumping up and down, pointing at me.

The father was howling with laughter. My wife was shaking her head.

But the real magic happened with the rest of the patrons.

Suddenly, the tension of the “serious restaurant” just snapped.

A waiter nearby actually dropped a spoon because he was laughing so hard.

An elderly couple two tables over started clapping.

It turned into this bizarre, beautiful standing ovation for a man who, in any other context, was wearing the symbols of a regime that had once hunted him.

That was the power of that show. We took something that had been a nightmare for the world and we turned it into a way to laugh together.

But the boy didn’t stop there.

Emboldened by my “confession,” he decided he was now officially part of the operation.

He took a long breadstick from his table, held it against his shoulder like a bayonet, and stood guard at the entrance of the restaurant.

He told the hostess, “Nobody goes in! Sergeant Schultz is eating his dinner and we cannot let the Gestapo find him!”

The manager of the restaurant came out to see what the commotion was.

Instead of being annoyed, he went back to the kitchen and brought the boy a small plate of cookies.

He told the kid, “These are secret messages from London. Make sure the Sergeant gets them immediately.”

For the next hour, I had to sit there and pretend to “decode” sugar cookies while the entire staff of a high-end Beverly Hills eatery played along.

I remember Werner Klemperer telling me later that he had similar encounters, though people were usually a bit more intimidated by him because of the monocle.

But for me, it was always about that warmth.

People would see me on the street and they wouldn’t yell “John!” They would yell “Schultz!”

And they would always expect me to be hiding something.

I once had a police officer pull me over for a minor traffic thing—I think I didn’t quite come to a full stop at a sign.

He walked up to the window, saw me, and just started shaking his head.

He didn’t even ask for my license.

He just looked into my backseat, which was completely empty, and said, “Is LeBeau back there in the trunk, Sergeant?”

I looked him right in the eye and said, “I have not seen him since the morning roll call, officer. He is very sneaky.”

The officer just waved me on. He didn’t give me a ticket.

He just said, “Get back to the barracks before Klink realizes you’re gone.”

It was a strange way to live, being a walking punchline for a war that had been so personal and so painful to me.

My family, they were lost in that war. I was one of the lucky ones who got out.

People often asked me, “John, how can you play a Nazi?”

And I would tell them, “I’m not playing a Nazi. I’m playing a man who is trapped in a uniform he doesn’t want to wear.”

I was playing a man surrounded by people who are smarter than him, just trying to get to the end of the day without getting in trouble.

That’s why the fans loved him. Schultz was all of us when we are overwhelmed by the world.

That day in the restaurant, after the boy finally went back to his seat, I realized that the character had become something bigger than the script.

He was a bridge.

When I finished my meal, the waiter brought the check, but it had “I SEE NOTHING” written across the total in big, bold letters.

The meal was on the house.

I tried to pay, but the manager just winked and said, “We don’t want any trouble with the Underground, Mr. Banner.”

It’s funny how a little grey suit and a catchphrase can change the way the world looks at you.

I think about that boy sometimes. I wonder if he grew up and realized the truth.

I wonder if he realized that the “German Sergeant” he protected in Beverly Hills was actually a Jewish man from Vienna who just loved making people smile.

In the end, that was the best part of the job.

We weren’t just making a television show. We were making friends.

And if I had to spend the rest of my life pretending I didn’t see Hogan sneaking out of the tunnel, well, that was a small price to pay for the laughter.

It’s a wonderful thing to be remembered for making the world a little lighter, don’t you think?

What’s a TV character that felt like a real friend to you growing up?