Howard Caine

At the age of 13 Howard Caine (family name Cohen) moved with his family from his hometown of Nashville, TN, to New York City, where he began studying acting. Learning to erase his Southern accent, he went on to became a master of 32 foreign and American dialects. After service in the Navy during WWII, Caine continued his studies at The School of Drama, Columbia University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. He was featured on Broadway in "Wonderful Town", "Inherit the Wind" "Lunatics and Lovers" and "Tiger at the Gates". He replaced Ray Walston as "Mr. Applegate", the star of Broadway's "Damn Yankees". He was featured in such films as From the Terrace (1960), Pay or Die! (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Man from the Diners' Club (1963), Pressure Point (1962) and Alvarez Kelly (1966). He co-starred with Godfrey Cambridge and Estelle Parsons in Watermelon Man (1970) and played Lewis Morris of New York in 1776 (1972). He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. He acted in over 750 live and filmed TV shows, but is perhaps best remembered as Gestapo Maj. Hochstetter on the classic Hogan's Heroes (1965), a role he played for the series' entire six-year run. He was featured as Everett Scovill, a thinly disguised portrait of Charles Manson's attorney Irving Kanarek, on the CBS two-part TV Movie of the Week Helter Skelter (1976). He had always been fascinated with the Appalachian five-string banjo, and began mastering it in the mid-'60s. Since the summer of 1970 until his untimely death in 1993, he had taken trophies at 29 prominent banjo and fiddle contests in the Southland for both Best Traditional Banjo and Traditional Singing. He was also a popular folk singer and appeared at a number of prominent folk clubs and folk festivals.