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Actor Robert Clary, who played the role of Corporal Louis LeBeau on the TV series Hogan’s Heroes, died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday at the age of 96.
Clary’s granddaughter Kim Wright confirmed his death The Hollywood Reporter.
A Holocaust survivor, Clary was the last living member of the main cast of the CBS sitcom that ran for six seasons from September 1965 to April 1971.
Actor Robert Clary, who played the role of Corporal Louis LeBeau on the TV series Hogan’s Heroes, died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday at the age of 96. He was photographed in LA in 2016
The series starred Bob Crane in the titular role of Colonel Robert E. Hogan, an American who leads a group of Allied POWs in a mission to defeat the Nazis from the Luft Stalag 13 camp.
Clary was born Robert Max Widerman in Paris on March 1, 1926, the youngest in an Orthodox Jewish family of 14 children.
He started singing and entertaining at age 12 and was 16 when his family was sent to Auschwitz where his parents were murdered in the gas chamber.
“My mother said the most remarkable thing,” he told THR in 2015. She said, “Behave yourself.” She probably knew me as a snot. She said, “Behave yourself. Do what they tell you to do.”‘
Clary was the last living member of the main cast of the CBS sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, which ran for six seasons from September 1965 to April 1971.
Clary was featured in a September 17, 1965 episode of the series
The actor was pictured with costar Larry Hovis in a 1967 episode of the series
Clary was pictured with Cynthia Lynn in a 1967 episode of the series
Clary said his ability to entertain was key to staying alive – he performed for SS soldiers every other week – as he was the only person of his captured relatives to survive amid his 31-month incarceration in concentration camps .
“Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age is why I survived,” he said in the 2015 interview.
Clary had not spoken publicly about his time during the Holocaust, but eventually gave details of the events in response to Holocaust deniers.
“For 36 years I kept these wartime experiences locked inside myself,” Clary said. “But those who try to deny the Holocaust, my suffering and the suffering of millions of others have forced me to speak up.”
In his 2001 memoir From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes, he recounted the juxtaposition of working on the WWII series amid his real-life experiences.
‘I had to explain that [Hogan’s Heroes] was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp,’ Clary said. “And while I didn’t want to downplay what soldiers went through during their internment, it was like night and day what people went through in concentration camps.”
Clary was seen with one-time Broadway costar Eartha Kitt on the game show Stump the Stars in 1963
Clary had also appeared in soap operas including Days of Our Lives, The Bold and The Beautiful and The Young and the Restless
Clary was seen at a 2017 dinner hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in LA
After his liberation he moved to France in May 1945, where he continued to sing; and to Los Angeles in 1949, where he recorded material for Capitol Records.
He went on to appear in films such as 1951’s Ten Tall Men and 1951’s Thief of Damascus before legendary entertainer Eddie Cantor took him under his wing.
After accompanying Cantor to the La Vie en Rose club, where he performed, he was cast in the 1952 New Faces, a Broadway musical revue written in part by Mel Brooks and starring Eartha Kitt and Paul Lynde. Clary sang the tunes Lucky Pierre and I’m In Love With Miss Logan in the production, which was then filmed by Fox and shown in theaters in 1954.
Clary teamed up with Ricardo Montalban and Bea Arthur in the 1955 Broadway production of Seventh Heaven.
He appeared in films such as 1963’s A New Kind of Love with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; and The Hindenburg from 1975.
He had also appeared in soap operas including Days of Our Lives, The Bold and The Beautiful, and The Young and the Restless.
Clary’s vocals have also been featured on several jazz records with contributions from songwriters Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer.
He was married for 32 years to the late Natalie Cantor, one of Eddie Cantor’s daughters, prior to her death in 1997.