Robert Clary Dies

Robert Clary was born Robert Max Widerman on March 1, 1926, He was the youngest of 14 children, 10 of whom died in the Holocaust^[1]. His parents, Baila and Moishe Widerman were Polish Jewish immigrants. At age 12, he began a career singing professionally on a French radio station and also studied art in Paris. In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth, in Upper Silesia (now Otmęt, Poland).

He was tattooed with the identification “A5714” on his left forearm. He was later sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. He would sing to the SS soldiers, accompanied by an accordionist, and contributes this to his survival. He was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. Twelve other members of his immediate family had been sent to Auschwitz concentration camp; Clary was the only survivor. Three of his family had not been captured and survived the German occupation of France.

After returning he sang songs that were popular in France and the United States. Clary made his first recordings in 1948; they were brought to the United States on wire and were issued on disk by Capitol Records. In the United States, he appeared on The Ed Wynn Show in 1950. Clary later met Merv Griffin and Eddie Cantor. This eventually led to Clary meeting Cantor’s daughter, Natalie Cantor Metzger, whom he married in 1965.

Cantor later got Clary a spot on The Colgate Comedy Hour. In the mid-1950s, Clary appeared on NBC’s early sitcom “The Martha Raye Show” and on CBS’s drama anthology series “Appointment with Adventure”. He also appeared in several Broadway musicals. In 1952, he appeared in the film “Thief of Damascus” which also starred Paul Henreid and Lon Chaney Jr. In 1958, he guest-starred on “The Gisele MacKenzie Show”(NBC).

He guest-starred on “The Munsters Today” (1989) as Louis Schecter, Lily’s acting coach, in the episode “Green Eyed Munsters”. In 1965 he accepted the role of Corporal Louis LeBeau on the sitcom “Hogans Heroes” in which Allied soldiers in a POW camp bested their clownish German army captors with espionage schemes, and played the war strictly for laughs during its 1965-71 run. The 5-foot-1 Clary sported a beret and a sardonic smile.

After Hogan’s Heroes was canceled in 1971, Clary maintained close ties to fellow Hogan’s Heroes cast members Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin, whose lives were also affected by the Holocaust. He played Lucien Chariot on “The High Chaparral” (1967–1971), “Love, American Style” (1969), Robert LeClair on “Days of Our Lives” (1972–1973, 1975–1983, 1986–1987),

Pierre Roulland on The Young and the Restless (1973–1974), Ipsy Dauphin in “Escape/Cinderella Girls” on Fantasy Island (1978), Pierre Jourdan on The Bold and the Beautiful (1990–1992), “The New Adam-12” (1990). His movies appearances were in “Ten Tall Men” (1951), “Thief of Damascus” (1952), “New Faces” (1954), “A New Kind of Love” (1963), “The Hindenburg” (1975), and “Remembrance of Love” (1982).

Robert Clary died Wednesday, November 16, 2022, of natural causes at his home in the Los Angeles area. He was the last surviving original star of the “Hogan Heroes” sitcom. Robert published a memoir, “From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary”, in 2001. He spent years touring Canada and the United States, speaking about the Holocaust. He was a painter, painting from photographs he took on his travels.