THE HAT SQUAD: SIGRID VALDIS

Sigrid Valdis has passed away at the age of 72.

For five years, she played Fraulein Hilda on 'Hogan's Heroes'. Hilda was the sexy secretary of Colonel Wilhelm Klink at Stalag 13, and she was aware of the espionage activities of Colonel Robert Hogan and his crew of prisoners.

I'd like to think that Toobworld imitated the Trueniverse. I'd like to think that when it became too dangerous for her to remain at Stalag 13, Hilda was smuggled out and sent to England to hide. There she waited until the end of the war, when she was reunited with Colonel Hogan. They married and moved to America, where she lived until the end of her days.

Of course, since 'Hogan's Heroes' was set twenty years in the past of the Trueniverse when it was first broadcast, it's likely that Hilda Hogan died long before Sigrid Valdis. (I never understood how she could pick that as her stage name. So clunky! Her birth name was Patricia Olson, from Bakersfield.)

Mrs. Crane died at the home of her daughter. The twice-widowed actress had three children - a daughter by her previous marriage and a son and daughter with Bob Crane, who played Colonel Hogan and who passed away in 1978.

As Red Skelton would have said, "May God bless....."

BCnU.....
Toby OB
[amended - thanks, Brent!]