Hogan's Heroes – "Hogan's Heroes March" (1966)

We’ve got a slogan

From Colonel Hogan

And Colonel Hogan’s a her0, too!

As the great Nick Lowe once said,

And so it goes and so it goes

And so it goes and so it goes

But where it’s goin’ no one knows

Truer words were never written – 2 or 3 lines proves that over and over.

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So there I was, sitting at my computer and working on a 2 or 3 lines post, when the train jumped the tracks.  Before I knew what was happening, I had lost control of my wildly successful little blog and was up to my neck in weirdness and sleaze. 

To paraphrase the Bobby Fuller Four, I fought the blog but the blog won – resulting in the hot messes you’re about to read.  

Yes, I said “hot messes” – not “hot mess.”  As is my wont, I took what was originally going to be one post and pumped it so full of hot air that I could turn it into two posts.  (If you’ve ever wondered how I’ve been able to generate over 1500 posts since I started writing 2 or 3 lines in 2009, that’s how!)

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I could begin at the beginning . . . but everyone begins at the beginning.  So let’s begin at the end instead.

Here’s the tombstone that marks the burial place of actor Bob Crane, the star of Hogan’s Heroes – the truly appalling sixties sitcom that portrayed life in a Nazi prison camp as being more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not a fan of tombstones with photographs:

And I’m even less of a fan of tombstones featuring bad (and badly proofread) poetry:

“Wild Wheat”

The Wind Blows O're [sic] The Plains

Through The Wild Wheat

Wild Wheat That's Never Reaped

Wild Wind. Wild Wind. Wild Wheat

And Then The Stillness Comes

And Heat of August Sun

The Earth Is Parched And Dry

All Living Now Must Die

Wild Wheat against The Sky

Once Young Now Brown And Dry

All Signs Of Life Are Gone

Yet In Still Earth The Roots Live On

It's [sic] Seeds Of Life Are Sewn

Wind Blown Far A Field

All Little Ones Must Fly

Wild Wheat Will Never Die 

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“Wild Wheat” is credited to “Patrica Crane, Humanist.”  Patricia Crane (née Patricia Olson) was Bob Crane’s widow, and she was buried next to him when she died in 2007.

So who was Sigrid Valdis, and why is her name on the tombstone next to Crane’s?  

Sigrid Valdis and Patricia Crane are one and the same, boys and girls.  Like her husband, Patricia was an actor – in fact, she and Bob met when they were both appearing in Hogan’s Heroes.  Sigrid Valdis was her stage name.

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Hogan’s Heroes ran for six seasons – from 1965 to 1971 – on CBS.  

In the show, Bob Crane played Colonel Robert Hogan, the ranking officer among the American, British, and French prisoners of war at a fictional German prison camp.  

His POW sidekicks included Richard Dawson (a Brit who later achieved fame and fortune as the smarmy host of Family Feud), and Robert Clary (a French Jew who was the only survivor among thirteen family members who were sent to concentration camps).

The three main Nazi characters in the shows were played by German or Austrian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after Hitler’s ascension to power.

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Sigrid Valdis had a guest role in one Hogan’s Heroes episode in its first season, and then took over the role of Hilda, the German POW camp commander’s secretary, for the rest of the series’s run.  

Hilda and Hogan did a lot of canoodling.  She betrayed her Nazi superiors by giving Hogan information that helped his espionage and sabotage missions to succeed.

Her first husband died in 1967.  Crane and his first wife were divorced in 1970, and he married Valdis later that same year.  (Is it possible he jumped the gun a little?  Just sayin’.)  

The two were wed on the set of Hogan’s Heroes:

Richard Dawson was Crane’s best man.

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Hogan’s Heroes was a top ten show in its first season, which gave someone the bright idea of having the cast members record an LP.

The Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II album, which was released in 1966, included not only a number of songs that were hits during World War II – including “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” “Lili Marleen,” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” – but also a new version of the TV show’s theme song, the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”

The show’s opening credit sequence featured an instrumental theme by famed film composer Jerry Fielding.  Fielding wrote some very clever lyrics for his theme, and the new version of the “Hogan’s Heroes March” was released as the initial track of the Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II album.

Don’t sleep on Jerry Fielding, whose scores for the movies Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and The Outlaw Josey Wales were nominated for Oscars.

And don’t sleep on Bob Crane, who played the drums on the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”  Crane, who was no slouch when it came to drumming, appeared on a number of TV variety shows in the sixties.  Click here to see his 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. 

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Things get very dark in the next 2 or 3 lines, which will tell you all about the sordid stuff that Bob Crane got into after Hogan’s Heroes went off the air.

It’s a creepy story, and I’ve chosen a creepy song to feature in that post – a song that has a connection to Crane and his sleazy goings-on.

In the meantime, click here and enjoy the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”