John Banner, born Johann Banner, was an Austrian film and television actor. He
is best known for his role as Master Sergeant Schultz in the situation comedy
Hogan's Heroes. Schultz, constantly encountering evidence that the inmates
of his stalag were planning mayhem, frequently feigned ignorance with the
catchphrase, "I know nothing! I see nothing! I hear nothing!".
Early years Banner was born to Jewish parents in
Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He studied for a law degree at the University of
Vienna, but decided instead to become an actor. In 1938, when he was performing
with an acting troupe in Switzerland, Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to Nazi
Germany. Banner emigrated to the United States, where he rapidly picked up
English. World War II
In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps, underwent basic
training in Atlantic City and became a supply sergeant. He even posed for a
recruiting poster. He served until 1945. According to fellow Hogan's Heroes actor
Robert Clary, "John lost a lot of his family" to the Holocaust.
Acting = Broadway=
Banner appeared on Broadway three times: in a musical revue called From Vienna,
which ran for two months in 1939; and in two comic plays: Pastoral, in which he
had a leading role, but which had a very brief run in November 1939; and The Big
Two, which also ran briefly in January 1947. Early on, before he became fluent
in English, he had to learn his lines phonetically.
= Films= Banner appeared in over 40 feature
films. His first credited role was a German captain in Once Upon a Honeymoon,
starring Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. He played a Gestapo agent in 20th
Century Fox's Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas. His typecasting did not
please him – he would later learn that his family members who had remained in
Vienna all perished in Nazi concentration camps – but it was the
only work he was offered. Banner himself was held briefly in a
prewar-concentration camp. = From the 1950s to Hogan's Heroes=
Banner made more than 70 television appearances between 1950 and 1970,
including the Lone Ranger, Sky King, The Adventures of SupermanMister Ed,
Thriller, The Untouchables, My Sister Eileen, The Lucy Show, Perry Mason, The
Partridge Family, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Alias Smith and Jones, The
Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Hazel. In the late 1950s, a still slim Banner
portrayed Peter Tchaikovsky's supervisor on a Disneyland anthology series about
the composer's life. This followed a scene with fellow Hogan's Heroes actor
Leon Askin as Nikolai Rubinstein. In 1953, he had a bit part in the Kirk
Douglas movie The Juggler as a witness of an attack on an Israeli policeman by
a disturbed concentration camp survivor. In 1954, he had a regular role as
Bavarro in the children's series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Two years later, he
played a train conductor in the episode "Safe Conduct" of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents, appearing with future co-star Werner Klemperer, who played a spy. He
played Nazi villains in several later films: the German town mayor in The
Young Lions {1958}; Rudolf Höss in Operation Eichmann; and Gregor Strasser
in Hitler. The year before the premiere of Hogan's Heroes, Banner portrayed a
soldier in the World War II German "home guard" in 36 Hours. Although it was a
non-comedic role in a war drama, Banner still displayed some of the affable
nature that would become the defining trait of the character he would create
for television the following year. By coincidence, during the final moments of
36 Hours, John Banner's character meets up with a border guard played by Sig
Ruman, who had portrayed another prisoner-of-war camp chief guard named
Sergeant Schulz, in the 1953 film Stalag 17, starring William Holden. In 1968,
Banner co-starred with Werner Klemperer, Leon Askin and Bob Crane in The Wicked
Dreams of Paula Schultz. According to Banner in a newspaper
interview, before he met and married his French wife Christine, he weighed 178
pounds; he claimed her good cooking was responsible for his weight gain to 260
pounds, as of 1965. This helped gain him the part of the kindly, inept German
prisoner-of-war camp guard in Hogan's Heroes. Banner was loved not only by the
viewers, but also by the cast, as recalled by cast members on the Hogan's
Heroes DVD commentary. The Jewish Banner defended his character, telling TV Guide
in 1967, "Schultz is not a Nazi. I see Schultz as the representative of some
kind of goodness in any generation." After Hogan's Heroes was cancelled in
1971, Banner starred as the inept gangster Uncle Latzi in a short-lived
television situation comedy, The Chicago Teddy Bears. His last acting appearance
was in the March 17, 1972, episode of The Partridge Family. He then retired to
France with his Paris-born second wife. Death
Less than one year after moving back to Europe, while visiting friends in
Vienna, John Banner died from an abdominal hemorrhage on his 63rd
birthday. He was survived by his wife Christine; they had no children.
See also Biography portal
References Notes
External links John Banner at the Internet Movie
Database John Banner at the Internet Broadway
Database John Banner at Find a Grave
Banner in the 1942 recruiting poster