The Gestapo brings three lovely ladies into the camp to interrogate the prisoners.The Gestapo brings three lovely ladies into the camp to interrogate the prisoners.The Gestapo brings three lovely ladies into the camp to interrogate the prisoners.
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- TriviaWhen Hochstetter finds out that one of the girls is dating a Gestapo officer, Klink jokes that he has a resemblance to Emil Jannings. Jannings was the very first winner of the Best Actor Oscar. However, with the advent of the "talkies" Jannings' career in Hollywood ended due to his very thick German accent.
- GoofsThe button found by the Germans after the bridge sabotage, pointing to U.S. involvement, was not on any of the uniforms at the event.
- Quotes
Inge Wagner: Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Inge Wagner. This is Heidi Baum. And this Anna Mannheim.
LeBeau: LeBeau, Louis. Corporal. 19176546.
Inge Wagner: I'd say that you're well-trained for the convention, Corporal LeBeau. And there's nothing in the rules that says you cannot join us for a glass of champagne.
LeBeau: No.
Anna Mannheim: Won't you sit down please, Corporal LeBeau?
Heidi Baum: [LeBeau sits in a chair] Here, please.
[LeBeau sits down in the couch]
Inge Wagner: [pours four glasses of champagne] A toast. To Corporal LeBeau.
[they clink their glasses with one another and laugh]
LeBeau: Call me Louis.
Inge Wagner: [later on, after having multiple glasses of champagne] More champagne, Louis?
LeBeau: No more.
Inge Wagner: Is there something wrong with the wine? I thought the best champagne came from Reims?
LeBeau: Oh, it does. And also from Epernay.
Heidi Baum: I never heard Epernay.
LeBeau: The most beautiful part of France. My father's family comes from there.
Inge Wagner: Ah. Is he also in the wine business?
LeBeau: No. He worked in the railroad yards.
Heidi Baum: That must be fascinating.
LeBeau: I remember as a boy. I... I used to play in the secret tunnel under the tracks, where he used to store the old equipment.
[sighs]
LeBeau: My brother never knew I discovered it.
Inge Wagner: Oh, that's a fine story, isn't it?
Heidi Baum: Yes, it is.
Inge Wagner: [later on, after flirting with LeBeau for an hour] How is the patè?
LeBeau: Mm. Fantastic.
Inge Wagner: We had it sent directly from Strassberg.
LeBeau: The only place for patè.
Inge Wagner: You ever been there?
LeBeau: I used to go to visit my friend, Claude Wauthier.
Inge Wagner: Wauthier. Isn't he the famous French violinist?
LeBeau: [laughs] No, there's no musical talent at all. His old talent was for making radios.
Inge Wagner: [laughs] My brother used to make radios too. He used to talk to people as far away as England.
LeBeau: Oh, Claude spoke to people in England all the time. He even spoke to a man in Australia.
Inge Wagner: I find you very fascinating, Louis.
LeBeau: I find you interesting too, Igne.
[kisses her fingers]
LeBeau: I've been with you an hour and you haven't asked me a question yet.
Inge Wagner: Oh, that I'd because I know I could never get any information out of you.
- ConnectionsSpoofs To Sir, with Love (1967)
Either way, Arthur Julian's script repurposes his idea of women-starved prisoners going gaga over three hot tomatoes from Season One's "I Look Better in Basic Black" for this amusing trifle that plays more on psychology seeing as the women here are German Gestapo operatives trying to wheedle information out of the prisoners of war in Stalag 13 instead of Allied entertainers who got lost and captured and made a pit stop at Stalag 13 before they were taken to be interrogated, but you can see the similarities, yes? Given the meat-grinder formula of cranking out one episode after another, repetition is bound to occur.
When Hogan's Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit under American Colonel Hogan operating covertly from Stalag 13, are out blowing up a couple of bridges one night, American Sergeant Carter unknowingly has a button torn off his uniform that is found by a German soldier searching for saboteurs. That brings Gestapo Major Hochstetter to Stalag 13, where he tells camp commandant Colonel Klink that he suspects his prisoners of the sabotage, leading to his crack new interrogation team arriving later.
Why does Hochstetter suspect Hogan's Heroes? Apart from his long-held suspicions about them whose evidence always eludes him, he tells Klink that he knows no American units were operating in the area--the found button conveniently has "US" stamped on it, leading to misidentification buffoonery by Klink and Sergeant Schultz--so it had to be the POWs.
In the real world, that would suggest that American forces were in or very near Germany, which would be in the last months of the war, when conditions in Germany were desperate. In turn, that makes it highly unlikely that Hochstetter's crack interrogation unit would be three sexy women who use their feminine wiles to seduce the truth from prisoners of war over a couple of blown-up bridges. Well, one bridge was not blown up, but we'll get to that shortly.
But why let reality interfere with the arrival of babes Inge Wagner (Sabrina Scharf), Heidi Baum (Christiane Schmidtmer), and Anna Mannheim (Inge Jaklyn), each looking resplendent in a dress of a primary color, who already have the Heroes lining up to be "interrogated" with instruments of torture including champagne, caviar, and cuddling?
French Corporal LeBeau is the first, er, "victim," and while he claims not to have cracked under pressure, Inge does coax key information from him that he didn't even know he had. Hey, if you've been a POW for years and you find yourself lying on a couch with your head in the lap of a foxy brunette like Inge, you'd probably be thinking with the wrong head too.
So, Hochstetter might have something after all, at least until Hogan tries to turn the tables on the finagling frauleins in a way that offers a solution to the unblown bridge while prompting a potential catfight among the Swinging Sixties sirens (and hinting at Hochstetter's own extracurricular activities).
Blondes Jaklyn and Schmidtmer are strictly eye candy as Scharf is clearly the lead "interrogator," turning in a serviceable performance playing off Bob Crane and especially Robert Clary. Previously, however, Schmidtmer had appeared in a key role in Stanley Kramer's 1965 epic message movie "Ship of Fools," with its prestigious ensemble cast (Jose Ferrer, Vivian Leigh, Simone Signoret) also including none other than Werner Klemperer; like Klemperer, Schmidtmer would later play a prison-camp warden in a decidedly different movie, the women-in-prison exploitation flick "The Big Doll House" (which also featured, believe it or not, surprisingly good "Petticoat Junction" alumna Pat Woodell, the first "Bobbie Jo").
At least Julian gets more mileage from his three Swinging Sixties sirens--they really do look like they stepped out of a contemporary sex farce and into a World War Two-era sitcom--than he did in "Basic Black," where that trio at least had the semblance of period credibility, but "From the Gestapo with Love" does emit the smell of desperation--and what better way to mask that aroma than with some mild titillation? Hey, it worked on LeBeau.
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- darryl-tahirali
- Apr 15, 2023