The comedy series "Hogan's Heroes", in which Banner played Sergeant Hans Schultz, the role for which he is most often remembered, debuted on the CBS Television Network in 1965. According to Banner, before he met and married his French wife Christine, he weighed ; he claimed her good cooking was responsible for his weight gain to , which helped him land the part. The character of Schultz is a bumbling, but ultimately lovable German guard at a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. The camp is used by the prisoners as a secret staging area for sabotage and intelligence-gathering. Schultz is forever becoming indebted to the prisoners, which they use to the Allies' advantage for their continuing espionage work. His main goal is to avoid any trouble with his superiors, which often leads him to ignore the clandestine activities of the prisoners. (On those occasions, he often used his catchphrase "I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!" As the series went on, this became simply "I know nothing. Nothing"!). The genesis of the line could be from Banner’s appearance on the TV crime drama “The Untouchables”, in the episode “The Takeover” (1961), when confronted by a gangster he nervously responds with his future classic line. Another signature phrase used was "Jolly joker"!, when one of the POWs would make a joke at his expense.