Howard Caine was born on January 2, 1926, in Nashville, Tennessee, into a Jewish family. At the age of 13, Cohen moved with his family 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. Caine served in the United States Navy during World War II, fighting the Japanese in the Pacific Theatre. After the war, Caine studied drama at Columbia University, where he graduated summa cum laude.  He appeared on Broadway in Wonderful Town, Inherit the Wind, Lunatics and Lovers and Tiger at the Gates. He succeeded Ray Walston as “Mr. Applegate” in the original production of Damn Yankees. He was featured in such films as From the Terrace (1960), Pay or Die (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Brushfire (1962), The Man from the Diner’s Club (1963), Pressure Point (1962) and Alvarez Kelly (1966). He co-starred with Godfrey Cambridge and Estelle Parsons in Watermelon Man (1970). He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.  He acted in more than 750 live and filmed television programs, including the western series, The Californians, Two Faces West, and The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters. He may be best-remembered as Major Hochstetter on Hogan’s Heroes (1965). He was featured as “Everett Scovill”, a thinly disguised portrait of Charles Manson’s attorney Irving Kanarek, in Helter Skelter (1976).  From his early childhood in Tennessee, Caine had always been fascinated with the Appalachian five-string bluegrass banjo and began mastering it in the mid-1960s. From the summer of 1970 until his 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.  Caine died of a heart attack on December 28, 1993.