17/11/2022
Robert Clary, born Robert Max Widerman (March 1, 1926 – November 16, 2022)
He is best remembered for his role in the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes as Corporal Louis LeBeau (1965 to 1971). He also had recurring roles in the soap operas Days of Our Lives (1972 to 1987), and The Bold and the Beautiful (1990 to 1992). Clary was born in Paris, the youngest of 14 kids to his strict Orthodox Jewish parents. When he was 16, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, where his parents were murdered in the gas chamber. Clary was the only one from his captured family to survive. He wound up incarcerated at the N**i concentration camp Buchenwald for 31 months, where he made wooden shoe heels in a factory and got the identification number “A-5714” tattooed on his left forearm. “Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survived,” he said of singing with an accordionist every other Sunday for Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers at Buchenwald.
In May 1945, Clary returned to France and sang in dance halls. Four years later, he headed to Los Angeles to record for Capitol Records and, in 1950, appeared in a French comedy skit on a CBS variety show hosted by comedian Ed Wynn. His film credits include Ten Tall Men” (1951) and Thief of Damascus (1952). Clary also performed on Broadway in “New Faces of 1952” and “Seventh Heaven” in 1955. Clary wrote in his 2001 memoirs that he "Had to explain that [‘Hogan’s Heroes’] was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps.” Clary was married to Eddie Cantor’s daughter, Natalie, for 32 years. She died in 1997. He died on November 16, 2022 at age 96.
