Topic: Cynthia Lynn

[ToddF]

Who, you ask?  How about a picture



Hogan’s Heroes Star Cynthia Lynn Dies at 76

Hilga is now gone, that leaves LeBeau and Kinch as the last surviving members from what was my favorite show, as a little kid.

[ToddF]

Reading her bio reminds me of something.  Almost all the "Germans" in Hogans Heroes came from an oppressive background.  Either Klink and/or Schulze had concentration camps in their backgrounds and Hilga came from behind the Iron Curtain. 

[richb]

Werner Klemperer was actually Jewish.    He only agreed to play Colonel Klink if he would never win and never outsmart anyone.   He and his family fled Germany in the 1930's.   His father,  Otto, was also famous, a renowned conductor. 

He served in the US Army during WWII.  He actually was a talented musician as well as an actor.   

Robert Clary is Jewish as well,  and was imprisoned in a real  concentration camp including Buchenwald.   (I even heard a story once that HH producers put makeup over his number tattoo that the nazis put on him).   

Ivan Dixon who played Kinch passed away in 2008.  Kenny Washington,  who played Kinch's replacement in the last season of HH,  Richard Baker,  is still living. 

Ironically John Banner (Sergeant Schultz) who often played Nazis or at least German soldiers was also Jewish (many of his family members were killed by the Nazis).

I think the guy who played the general was Jewish as well.

Not to be picky,  but Cynthia Lynn played  Helga  not Hilga.    Hilga was played by Bob Cranes second wife Sigrid Valdis who's real name was Pat Olsen.    When they married Olsen replaced Lynn on HH.

One of my favorite shows,  I have them all on DVD. 

[Libertas]

It was a fun show, who as a kid didn't try to make forts and such incorporating secret doohickies in homage to HH?  Other than when the original Star Trek came out do I recall a more dicussed show from my youth.  Too bad Crane turned out to be a creep, but the show was gold.

Had no idea she was from Latvia.  Family must have followed behind the Russian advance into Germany got out when the fighting stopped.  Anybody surviving that time must have had a good guardian angel looking out for them.

[rustybayonet]

Watched it also, but "[ I know nothinic].....

[Libertas]

Hello, Schultzie!   

[ToddF]

Schultz was the first one to die.  That really bummed me out, I remember.

Reading the wiki, I see it was Schultz's entire family was lost to the concentration camps.  He only escaped because he was temporarily out of the country, with an acting troupe.  It takes a lot to experience that kind of loss, and remain a good person, which he was by all accounts.