Larry Hovis

Larry Hovis (February 20, 1936 – September 9, 2003) was an American singer and actor best known for the 1960s television sitcom Hogan's Heroes. Early life and career Hovis was born in Wapato, Washington, and moved to Houston, Texas, as a small child. Wapato is within the external boundaries of the Yakama Nation and is not a part of the Yakama Indian Reservation. As a youth, he was a singer, appearing on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Hovis attended the University of Houston. During the mid-1950s, Hovis sang in nightclubs with groups including the Mascots. He wrote songs and signed with Capitol Records, which released one album. His biggest song was "We Could Have Lots of Fun". He was part of the Houston-based Bill Gannon Trio and appears on their 1959 Carlton album, Sweet Singing Swing. After his 1966 screenplay credit in the Universal film "Out of Sight" Hovis began appearing in local theater productions. After some success, he moved to New York City in 1959 and appeared in the 1960 Broadway revue From A to Z, which showcased his singing and comedy talents. Television Hovis moved to California in 1963, where he performed comedy and tried to break into television. In 1964, he was discovered by Andy Griffith's manager and was hired to appear on the TV series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., where he played "Pvt. Larry Gotschalk". He also appeared on The Andy Griffith Show. In 1965, when another actor backed out of the television show Hogan's Heroes, Hovis was cast as "Sgt. Andrew Carter", a POW in a German prison camp who was an expert on explosives. In the pilot episode, Carter was a lieutenant, and was only going to appear in that one episode. For the series, the character became Sgt. Carter, replacing a character played by Leonid Kinskey in the pilot. (Kinskey decided after the pilot that he did not want to stay with a show that had actors pretending to be Nazis.) In the series, Carter was of Sioux ancestry. A few sources say that Hovis was partly of Yakama Indian ancestry, but no documentation supports his membership within the Yakama Nation. Later, in an episode of the comedy Alice, Hovis played an American Indian police detective who arrests a fake American Indian conman.