Werner Klemperer

Werner Klemperer was born on March 22, 1920, in Cologne, Germany, into a family of considerable musical distinction. His father was the celebrated orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer, and his mother, Johanna Geisler, was a soprano. Klemperer had a younger sister, Lotte, born in 1923. His father was Jewish by birth, having converted to Catholicism before returning to Judaism; his mother was Lutheran. On his paternal side, his grandfather belonged to the Jewish community in Prague and his grandmother was a Sephardic Jew from Hamburg. Otto Klemperer was also a first cousin of the writer Victor Klemperer. Despite growing up in a household defined by music, Werner Klemperer acknowledged that he possessed little musical aptitude of his own. The family left Germany in 1933 and settled in Los Angeles, where Otto Klemperer took up the conductorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a post he held through 1939.

Klemperer began exploring performance as a student at University High School and subsequently enrolled in acting courses at the Pasadena Playhouse. His studies were interrupted by military service when he joined the United States Army during World War II. Stationed in Hawaii, he was assigned to the Army's Special Services unit and spent the war years touring the Pacific to entertain troops. Following his discharge, he turned to the Broadway stage, making his debut there in 1947. That same year he appeared in both Heads or Tails and Bertolt Brecht's Galileo. He returned to Broadway in 1951 in the comedy Twentieth Century, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and again in 1955 in another comedy, Dear Charles.

Alongside his stage work, Klemperer built a substantial screen and television career during the 1950s and early 1960s. His first major film role came in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man in 1956, in which he played a psychiatrist. Earlier that same year he appeared in a smaller capacity in Death of a Scoundrel, as the lawyer of the character portrayed by George Sanders. He had a role in the 1957 Errol Flynn film Istanbul and a pivotal part in the Maverick episode "Comstock Conspiracy" that year. In 1958 he appeared in Houseboat, and in 1961 he received significant attention for his portrayal of Emil Hahn, a Nazi prosecutor and defendant, in the award-winning film Judgment at Nuremberg. That same year he played the title role in Operation Eichmann, opposite John Banner, who would later become his Hogan's Heroes costar. His television credits during this period included Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1956, Perry Mason across three episodes between 1958 and 1964, Maverick in 1957, Gunsmoke in 1958, The Untouchables in 1960, and Have Gun – Will Travel in 1961. He also twice appeared as the character Hugo on the syndicated series How to Marry a Millionaire between 1957 and 1959. In 1965 he played Lt. Huebner in Ship of Fools, delivering a notable exchange opposite Vivien Leigh.

Klemperer became most widely recognized for his role as Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the inept and self-important Kommandant of Stalag 13 on the CBS television sitcom Hogan's Heroes, which ran from 1965 to 1971. Aware that he would be portraying a German officer of the Nazi era, Klemperer accepted the part only on the condition that Klink be written as a fool who never succeeded. He received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, from 1966 to 1970, winning the award in both 1968 and 1969. During the run of the series he made a cameo as Klink in the Batman episode "It's How You Play the Game" and appeared as Officer Bolix in a 1966 episode of Lost in Space. He starred in the 1969 television film Wake Me When the War Is Over, playing German Major Erich Mueller alongside Eva Gabor. In 1993, he reprised the role of Klink in a guest appearance on The Simpsons, voicing the character as Homer's guardian angel in the episode "The Last Temptation of Homer."

After his father's death in 1973, Klemperer resumed his Broadway career. He appeared in The Night of the Tribades in 1977 and went on to expand his work into operatic and musical performance. From 1979 to 1982 he appeared as Bassa Selim in 18 performances of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1981 he played Prince Orlofsky in Seattle Opera's production of Die Fledermaus. His performance as Herr Schultz in the 1987 Broadway revival of Cabaret earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He also participated in notable recordings, including a 1979 studio recording of Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conductor Seiji Ozawa, and a 1991 recording of Berlioz's Lelio with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He served as a member of the board of directors of the New York Chamber Symphony and worked as a narrator with numerous American orchestras, among them the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. In 1990 he narrated the children's story Gerald McBoing Boing for a classical music recording for children.

Klemperer made his final Broadway appearance in 1995 in the Circle in the Square production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, playing Professor Serebryakov. His Broadway career thus spanned nearly five decades, from 1947 to 1995, encompassing productions including Uncle Vanya, Cabaret, The Night of the Tribades, Dear Charles, and On the Twentieth Century. Away from performance, he was an elected member of the council of Actors' Equity Association for many years and held the position of vice president of the union at the time of his death. He had two children, Mark, born in 1959, and Erika, born in 1963, with his second wife, Susan Dempsay. Werner Klemperer died on December 6, 2000.