You know, people always ask me if I had that thing glued to my face, Werner says, leaning back in the plush, velvet chair of the television studio.

It is 1991, and he is sitting across from an interviewer who has just pulled a small, circular piece of glass from a wooden box on the table between them.

Werner looks at the monocle with a mixture of professional respect and genuine exhaustion.

No glue, he clarifies, his voice still carrying that rich, operatic resonance. No wires, no tape, and certainly no magic.

Just pure, unadulterated vanity on the part of Colonel Klink and a very tired muscle in my right eyelid.

He explains that the monocle was never just a prop to him; it was the character’s entire sense of self.

If the monocle was firmly in place, Klink was the master of the camp, the Iron Colonel of the Luftwaffe.

But if that glass began to slip, even by a fraction of a millimeter, the facade of the Third Reich’s most incompetent officer began to crumble.

Werner recalls a specific afternoon during the third season of Hogan’s Heroes.

They were filming a scene in Klink’s office that required an unusual amount of gravitas.

A guest actor, playing a high-ranking and very humorless General, was visiting to inspect the camp’s security.

The set was unusually quiet that day, the air thick with the smell of stale coffee and the heat of the overhead studio lights.

Even Bob Crane was behaving himself, standing by the office door with his hands in his pockets, waiting for his cue to undermine my authority.

Werner had spent the morning practicing a very specific, sharp head-turn that he wanted to use to emphasize Klink’s supposed alertness.

He wanted to look like a hawk, sharp and intimidating, despite the ridiculousness of the uniform.

The cameras were humming, the film rolling through the gates with that rhythmic clicking sound that always signaled a long, serious take.

As Werner leaned over his desk to stare directly into the eyes of the visiting General, he felt a single bead of sweat form right at the edge of his eyebrow.

He knew he should call for a reset, but the performance was finally clicking into place.

He decided to push through, using the physical tension of holding the glass as part of the scene’s energy.

He drew a deep breath, ready to deliver the most authoritative line of the entire script.

Everything was perfectly still.

Then, the sweat met the rim of the glass.

The monocle did not simply fall.

Because of the extreme muscle tension Werner was using to keep the prop in place, his eyelid finally snapped shut like a mousetrap.

The piece of glass shot out of his eye socket with the velocity of a small projectile.

It flew across the desk, bypassed the startled General, and landed with a distinct, metallic plink inside a silver tray of sugar cookies.

For three agonizing seconds, the set was as silent as a tomb.

Werner stood there, one eye still squinted shut, his face frozen in a terrifying scowl that now looked like he was having a very intense medical emergency.

The guest actor, a man who took Method acting very seriously, stared down at the cookie tray.

Then he looked at Werner’s empty, squinting eye.

Then he looked back at the cookie.

The silence was finally broken by a low, rumbling vibration that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves.

It was John Banner.

Our beloved Schultz was trying to swallow a laugh so enormous that his entire six-foot-plus frame was physically shaking the office set.

I see nothing! Richard Dawson’s voice suddenly rang out from the shadows of the crew, perfectly mimicking Banner’s legendary catchphrase.

That was the end of the take, and effectively the end of the morning’s productivity.

The room erupted into a level of chaos that only the Hogan’s Heroes cast could manage.

Bob Crane was doubled over, leaning against a filing cabinet for support, while the director, Gene Reynolds, came running onto the set.

He wasn’t angry about the wasted film; he was trying to see exactly where the monocle had landed.

He found it sitting perfectly centered on top of a butter cookie, looking like a very strange piece of gourmet jewelry.

Werner, if you can do that on cue, I’ll give you a raise and your own spin-off, Gene joked, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

But that was the secret of the show—it was never on cue.

The monocle became the unofficial sixth member of the main cast, a prop with better comic timing than most of the actors in Hollywood.

The crew eventually started a Monocle Pool on the daily call sheet.

They would bet on which take the glass would decide to make its grand escape.

It was a dollar for the first hour and five dollars if it happened during a close-up with a guest star.

Werner recalls how the prop department tried to offer him spirit gum to stick the glass to his skin permanently.

He refused every single time.

He felt that if Klink was a buffoon, then the monocle should have the freedom to be a buffoon as well.

The constant struggle to keep that piece of glass in his eye added a layer of genuine strain to his face that served the comedy.

It made Klink look desperate, which was exactly the truth of the character.

The incident with the cookie tray became a legend on the Paramount lot, a story told to every new director who walked onto Stage 4.

Watch out for the flying glass, the veterans would whisper.

Richard Dawson, being the sharp wit of the group, began calling the monocle The Great Escape.

He would tell Werner that his eye was clearly a member of the Underground, trying to smuggle the glass out of the camp.

Even decades later, Werner says he can still feel the ghost of that glass against his cheek when he sees an old episode on television.

He remembers the way John Banner would finally catch his breath after a laughing fit and pat him on the back.

Werner, you are a terrible Nazi, but you are a wonderful comedian, John would say.

It was that atmosphere of shared joy that allowed them to film a comedy about a prisoner-of-war camp for six successful years.

They were playing people in a dark situation, but behind the scenes, they were just friends waiting for a piece of glass to ruin a perfectly good cookie.

Werner picks up the monocle from the table and smiles at it with genuine affection.

I think the monocle had a better career than I did, he says with a wink.

He tucks it back into the box, closing the lid on a small piece of television history that refused to stay put.

It is a reminder that even the most rigid authority figures are usually just one bead of sweat away from looking like a fool.

Who knew a single piece of glass could hold a whole show together by falling apart?