"johac" <jhachm@ixpres.com> wrote in message
news:jhachm-5D0473.00365204062005@news.giganews.com...

In article <3gchvhFbngdkU1@individual.net>,
"Robibnikoff" <witchypoo@broomstick.com> wrote:

Good gracious, I had no idea he wasn't dead already. May he RIP.
Hogan's Heroes' Actor Leon Askin Dies
By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 53 minutes ago

Leon Askin, the actor who played Gen. Albert Burkhalter in the 1960s
television comedy "Hogan's Heroes," has died, Austrian officials said
Friday.

The actor was 97. Neither city officials nor the Vienna hospital where he
died disclosed the cause or date of his death.

Askin was best known for his role as the Nazi general who constantly
threatened to send the prisoner of war camp's inept commander, Col.
Wilhelm
Klink, to the Russian front because of his stupidity.

"Beverly Hills school children would call after me, 'Klink, Klink!'"
Askin
wrote on his Web site. "People driving through Beverly Hills who saw
these
children raising their arms in the Hitler salute couldn't continue out of
sheer shock and amazement and brought traffic to a standstill."

Born Leo Aschkenasy in Vienna on Sept. 18, 1907, Askin worked as a
cabaret
artist in the 1930s before fleeing first to France and then to the United
States to escape persecution by the Nazis.

He had roles in dozens of films, including Billy Wilder's "One, two,
three"
and the Austrian director Fritz Lang's "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse." In
the course of his career, he appeared opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Richard
Burton and Peter Ustinov.

Askin took up residence in Vienna in 1994, returning to his roots in
cabaret. He also took roles in Vienna's Festwochen and the city's second
opera, the Volksoper.

He was decorated with Vienna's Gold Medal of Honor, one of the most
distinguished prizes the city offers.

"We have lost a huge actor and artist and a wonderful man," Mayor Michael
Haeupl said in a statement.

I remember him from the series, but I hadn't realized that he had done
so much else.

I know I've seen him in one or two other films, but I also had no idea he'd
done so much.