30 Days of Hogan's Heroes - Day 4
For this one the cut is really justified, because the answer’s loooooooong :o)
Day 4 - Favourite supporting character, female?
I hesitated a long time, because while there aren’t many main female characters, there are plenty of one-episode wonders, so to speak, and some of them are quite memorable. Lady Leslie Chitterly is crazy awesome (she manages to bluff Adolf Hitler on the phone - her “Really, ‘Dolf!” really are something) and Dr Suzanne Lechay is calm and smiling but fearless, with a core of steel … But I think my favourite female supporting character is Kumasa, aka Carol Dukes, from “Is General Hammerschlag Burning?”.
She’s an African-American artist from Detroit, performing in occupied Paris. Growing up in America left her somewhat bitter and cynical; she’s snarky, level-headed and clever, and knows how to look after herself. She’s an old classmate of Kinch’s, who describes her as a “high roller” back then, the kind of girl who was definitely above his league, but as it turns out, she had something of a crush on the “shy boy” :o)
Kinch (toasting): To old times.
Carol: May they never return.
Kinch then doesn’t beat around the bush and tells her outright she is their way to get to General Hammerschlag’s plans to blow up (okay, ‘defend’) Paris. Carol’s first reaction is to ask him what she has to gain in helping him - and that is very little.
Carol: What makes you think you can walk in here and casually ask me to jeopardize everything I’ve built all of my life, even risk my life, for what? What?
Kinch: You’ll have to fill that one in yourself.
Carol: All for a country that gave me nothing, and I mean not a thing!
It’s interesting to note that from the moment Kinch and Hogan arrive in Paris, the plot is moving forward because of the actions (or not-actions) of two characters: Kinch and Carol. General Hammerschlag is the antagonist, Hogan and Dubois help with the details of the scheme, Klink and Schultz serve as tools (yeah … sorry, Schultz!) to get to and from Paris … and that’s it. Kinch is in charge and comes up with an idea to con the general into bringing the plans, while Carol has to decide whether to get involved or not (and on which side) and struggles between her self-preservation instinct and her conscience. She’s still undecided as the con takes place, but she’s in control of the ‘séance’ scene until the goal is achieved, and she slaps Hogan to wake him up from his ‘trance’. She even advises the general to check that the plans he brought haven’t been tampered with - they haven’t; Dubois photographed them and put the originals back - which is a really bold move. It seems to pay off (the general is even more confident in the safety of his plans).
This episode was first aired in 1967, and it reflects the time it was made in. Not because it hasn’t aged well - it has, as most of the rest of the show - but it addresses an issue from the 40s that was even more sensitive in the 60s: the moral high ground in terms of race relations. The United States did not come close to the deliberate, industrial eradication of a whole group of people the Nazis engaged in (especially after 1942 and the Final Solution was put in motion), but the segregation laws and murders in the South and the less formal but just as violent racism in the North was an ugly blemish on a country fighting for freedom and the dignity of man. The 1960s were the decade of another fight for the dignity of man in the United States, and it’s logical that fiction, even set in the past (like Hogan’s Heroes) or the future (the multiracial crew of the starship Enterprise), should reflect as well as try to contribute to that fight.
I read Carol was partially modelled after Josephine Baker, who left the States and had a very successful career in France; her most famous song goes, “J’ai deux amours/Mon pays et Paris” (I have two loves: my country and Paris), which she later changed to “mon pays c’est Paris” (my country is Paris). She was a seriously awesome lady, worked with the French resistance (smuggling information in her music sheets) and received the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur for her work during the Occupation. She died almost 40 years ago, and is still very much beloved in France. Amazing lady.