belphegor1982 | 30 Days of Hogan's Heroes

Day 10 – Favourite actor?

Werner Klemperer, hands down :o) Honestly, it’s no wonder the man won prizes for his interpretation of Klink.

Colonel Klink is a snivelling, vain, petty man with an odd mix of delusions of grandeur and a desire to be just left in peace whether the war continues or not. On a meta level, you know he’s doomed to fail again and again in his schemes, and seeing this character flail about like a lizard in a tank is enjoyable by itself; and yet, Werner Klemperer manages to make him almost likeable, and certainly sympathetic at times. You want him to fail; but you don’t want him to die (and he comes close, sometimes). You want Hogan to win, but you want the more serious, worse bad guys to suffer more than Klink. Also, he’s just like Wile E. Coyote in that you know he’s going to get it at the end – half the fun is to discover just how, and he’s hilarious in his attempts to outsmart the Roadrunner/Hogan/the big old boulder rolling toward him.

Klink should have just been the village idiot and a fiddle for Hogan to play, but the way Werner Klemperer plays him makes him quite endearing. I don’t know about you, but in my headcanon Klink survived the war and settled down, maybe as a bookkeeper, somewhere he doesn’t have to grovel to generals and he can play his violin when the mood takes him. Badly, of course.