Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:39am

Otto Klemperer: Handel’s Messhiah

The father of actor Werner Klemperer, he of Hogan Heroes’ fame, was a world class conductor.  His conducting of the above performance of Handel’s Messiah is considered definitive by many critics.

 

From 1965.  Bing Crosby Productions produced many television shows, including Hogan’s Heroes.  It was only natural that Crosby would have the cast of Hogan’s Heroes as guests on his Christmas Special.  Both Klemperer and Banner were Jewish refugees from the Third Reich who served in the United States Army during World War II.  They both had lost relatives in the Holocaust and both encountered flak for being in the cast of Hogan’s Heroes.  Klemperer said that he would go to his grave happy knowing he had made Nazis look ridiculous and John Banner remarked that who but Jews could better poke fun at Nazis.  Having them sing Silent Night in the original German was a reminder that there was far more to the German culture, part of their heritage, than the nightmarish Nazi 12 year Reich.

Robert Clary sang a French Carol.  Also Jewish,  he is still alive at age 93.  As a boy he was sent to Buchenwald.  Three of his twelve siblings survived the War, all of the rest of his immediate family perished in the Holocaust, most of them at Auschwitz.

When Otto Klemperer watched the first episode of Hogan’s Heroes with his son he said that Werner’s work was good, but he wondered who wrote this drek.  Too much to expect a European gentleman of the old school like Otto Klemperer to have any appreciation for American sitcoms!

 

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Thomas Ambrosia
Thursday, December 26, AD 2019 2:43am

Hogans Heroes was then and now still the best TV show. Bing took a big chance and turned out well. The cast was well chosen
But WE the PEOPLE of the WORLD must never forget what the nazis did to well over 6 million Jews and so many others. Any US or indeed any politician or judge to compare illegal aliens to the Holocaust needs to taste what a concentration camp then was all about. To the millions of souls who died in the Holocaust and beyond, our sincere prayers. NEVER AGAIN PAX+

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