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Where are the Heroes?

Various! Maybe you have also wondered about the Stranglers classic "No more Heroes," a song from 1977 that places the Question "Whatever happened to the heroes" and provides the answer in the line "No more Heroes any more." In fact, there are still various types of heroes around these days. On the one hand, there are those that are glamorously celebrated among the many political, religious or historical heroes, some of them movies are made of. Then there are the heroes of daily life, mostly forgotten, some like firemen especially pointed out after tragedies like 9/11. With sports heroes not only winning is a criteria as we had seen with the example of the ski star Hermann Maier. The "Herminator" got most popular through his spectacular skiing accident at the Olympic Games 1998 in Nagano, recovered and still earned two gold medals during the same winter games. Mistakes make people likeable, they make the seemingly invincible stars one of us!

Another example is the Austrian soccer team, then called the "Wonder Team," which after a series of 11 miraculous successes (and 3 ties) on the continent in December 1932 lost 3:4 in England. For dominating the 2nd half after already being 0:2 behind this was regarded as one of their finest games and celebrated like a victory. The 1954 Soccer World Cup in Switzerland saw the reassembled Austrian team having quite a run before losing the semifinals to later surprise champion West Germany ("The Miracle of Bern "). Ending the tournament on third position provided quite a boost to the newly regained national identity after World War II. A typical case of "Wir sind wieder wer - We are somebody again!" But a little exaggeration can happen in excitement, just as with Baseball when US and Canadian teams summon every year to play the "World Series" to underline the excellence of a North American Championship.

Cool! Heroes don't always have to be "cool," but it surely helps, thinking of movies about imaginary heroes like the Men in Black (Will Smith, Johnny Cash, Ritchie Blackmore or Clint Black) and their infamous recruiting motto: "Be there - or be square" (Erscheinen Sie, sonst weinen Sie). Unbelievable… And the Austrian Shock-Artist Gottfried Helnwein painted his heroes: Hans Krankl, defeater of the German soccer team in Cordoba, Argentina, at the 1978 World Cup and goleador of the FC Barcelona (and SC Rapid Vienna), as well as Niki Lauda, after a sensational comeback in 1984 triple-Formula I champion (barely surviving the 1976 Nürburg Ring race, he had already won the Championship in 1975 and 1977), and finally Donald Duck with his deeply human character, as developed by Carl Barks (initially only known as "the good duck artist"). Often it is necessary to be dead for becoming a legend, but not always…

The Austrian Formular One champion Niki Lauda became something like a national monument. Over the years, he also built up two Airlines. After selling "Lauda Air" to Austrian Airlines and "Fly Niki" to Air Berlin, the Formula I racing legend would admit in a newspaper interview: "I'm running out of names!" Airline names can be funny and revealing, if one thinks of a delaying "Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport" and a disturbing "Keep Luggage Missing". Also, there is a persistent but definitely untrue rumour that British is the safest airline, for having the oldest flight attendants. After almost burning to death in a race car accident, Niki Lauda would always wear a cap, which became his trademark. Occasionally joking about this situation himself, also his biography "All under one cap - Alles unter einer Kappe" would contain a good one:

Three candidates answer Niki Lauda's job posting for an airplane mechanic. At the end of their job interviews, Lauda always asks the same questions: "What do you notice about me?" The first candidate replies: "You are lacking one ear." Lauda throws him out. The same happens with the second guy. Then the third candidate enters. "What do you notice about me?" - "You wear contact lenses!" Lauda is pleasantly surprised: "Correct! Just tell me, how you found out?" Says the mechanic: "Well - without ear - where should the glasses hold?"

Among the most popular Heroes of the 1980's there were Pop Star Falco and Movie Star Arnold Schwarzenegger. One reached new heights by topping the US charts with the Rap song "Rock me Amadeus" (in New German language, as defined through its slight mix with English expressions) , the other by playing in the action movie "Terminator" (extremely brutal, it became a huge international success not only with fans of automated weapons). Falco, after a car accident in 1998, was carried by long bearded rockers to his final rest at Vienna's Central Cemetery, next to music legends like Beethoven and Strauss.

Hansee Krankl, Nikee Lauda, Donald Duuuck - idols painted and remembered. Cordoba-soccer goleador, nearly-burnt Formula I triple-world campion and a duck that almost became human.

From Schwarzenegger's former restaurant "Schatzi on Main" in Santa Monica to his impressive hand prints at the "Walk of Fame" on Hollywood Boulevard and his prints on the "Street of the Champions" in the 6th district of Vienna near the Generali Center shopping center.

Famous! Arnie would become Austria's biggest Hollywood export since Johnny Weissmu(e)ller, who established the jungle lord's bloodcurdling primal scream as early as 1932 in "Tarzan the Ape Man," the first sound film of the genre, as well as director Billy Wilder, who held responsible for "Sunset Boulevard (1950)" and "Some like it hot (1959)." Schwarzenegger left Hollywood for politics after playing the "Terminator" for the third time. When he became Governator of California in 2003, bursting with pride back in his former home country the Governor of Styria, Waltraud Klasnic herself, performed the Stoakogler Trio's popular song: "Steirermen are very good, very, very good for Hollywood. Arnold's Styrian charm, hurray, is well known in the USA!" Shortly after re-recorded by a voice imitator, it also included the line: "Well, I say time is money. My Austrian slang seems funny. I love L.A. and I like New York, but I was born in Steiermoark."

Visiting Santa Monica, we found the Schwarzenegger's former restaurant "Schatzi's" on 3110 Main Street permanently closed, terminated so to say. Instead, we ended up having a Bodybuilder Dinner (grilled chicken and steamed vegetables) further down the road at the Firehouse Restaurant in Venice, which was supposedly also frequented by Arnold in his early days after muscle training. "Schatzi" is one of those terms of endearment. Derived from the German word for treasure, it translates into My Dear or MP, short for My Precious and absolutely not related to the German abbreviation for Machine Pistol. Later we saw Arnold's impressive hand prints at the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, typically signed with a cool "I'll be back!" Almost as nice as his prints on the Viennese "Street of the Champions," in good company of numerous local athletes in the Generali Center shopping mall. As a colleague suggested to me the other night, it would have been even more unique, if the line had been written in German language, or in Austrian dialect, where it would equal to something like "I kum wieda!" Almost sounding like a quote from the German Pink Panther theme song though: "Heute ist nicht alle Tage - ich komm wieder, keine Frage!" ("Today is not the end of all days - I'll be back, no question about that!")

Reading biographies gives a good insight into the otherwise idealized lives of those perceived successful. May those be politicians during controversial times such as the first republic in Austria, with all its armed conflict among the political parties, leaving wounds behind that didn't fully heal even after decades to come. And there are those fictional characters and those who used to play them. Big kids like Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, tough guys such as John Wayne, or more sensitive and sometimes seeing things (Harveys) like James Stewart, breakable and still so strong as Ingrid Bergman, idols shattering the youth like ol' Lex Barker, quiet and not fooling around to get to a point like Clint Eastwood, cold-blooded when seeing red like Charles Bronson, clobbering with a twinkle in the eye as Bud Spencer & Terence Hill, suffering on the run like Harrison Ford, spying in disguise as Jennifer Garner... who are your movie heroes? You name them, look up to them, watch them! And then the film is over and you are back on your own... to make it better. What goes without saying is that kids look up to more "Heroes" than adults, including fictional ones from books or screen plays. And therefore let's turn back time in order to remember ourselves and remind others of how it had been with those we had admired so much...

Strong! Heroes gotta be strong! That is expected from them, isn't it. By definition, they have to be strong, so to say. What counts the most though is inner strength. There is this song I heard the other morning on TV, when waiting downstairs in the hotel for my brother-in-law to get ready for running a marathon. I would have almost been in it too, as I offered to hand him a banana or something while he was running, but they had catering. Anyway, the chorus still echoes in my ears: "Now you tell me, who the strong one is!" In the following interview, the Country Singer mentioned this was about a mother. In a way I liked it and having won a gift certificate recently anyway, I picked up a Greatest Hits CD by this Clint Black (another man in black), hoping it would include that song, maybe just under a title I would not recognize. As I found out later, the new single "The Strong One" would be featured on Black's next CD release, which kept getting postponed.

"The Strong One" was also special for being the first title in Black's career that he did not write himself. He had just liked the message it transported and wanted it to be heard. Songwriter Bill Luther had been inspired by a friend, an unmarried woman, who got pregnant and chose to have the baby on her own. And so the song cleans up with the stereotype of women being the weaker gender. Men may appear physically stronger and emotionally deliberate (on the surface). Maybe secretly weeping into their pillow in the night, but during the day not revealing too much of their inner self. "For keeping silent is a men's domain - Weil Schweigen Maennersache ist," as the Austrian pop singer Rainhard Fendrich used to put it. On the other hand it is the women who often show an incredible amount of inner strength and unbreakability (if that is a word). In today's world more than ever. In a way they are the heroes of our times!

Fighters for truth, justice and the American way were believed dead until rediscovered by Hollywood. And then the new millennium saw the revival of costumed heroes...


On the next pages you will find biographies and memories of some of those mentioned above, starting with: Laurel.