Merry Christmas to all you War Movie Monday fans and thank you for following this year’s cavalcade of classic war pictures. This week’s pick is in honor of the Christmas season, with the 1953 William Wilder classic Stalag 17 which follows a group of American Air Force prisoners of war who are faced with a traitor among them in this movie adapted from the hit Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski who were both prisoners in the infamous Austrian camp.
The film stars William Holden (Sgt. Sefton), Don Taylor (Lt. Dunbar), Otto Priminger (Col. Von Scherbach), Robert Strauss (Stanislas “Animal” Kasava), Harvey Lembeck (Harry Shapiro), Peter Graves (Price), Sig Ruman (Sgt. Schulz), Gil Stratton (Clarence Harvey “Cookie” Cook), Neville Brand (Duke), and Richard Erdman (Hoffy). The film’s narration is performed by Stratton throughout the film.
The film opens with an escape performed by two inmates Manfredi and Johnson, who plan to tunnel out through the wire and make their way to neutral Switzerland. Thinking that all precautions have been taken, barracks chief Hoffy (Erdman) green lights the escape and the two men are intercepted and shot by the German guards who have been tipped off about the escape.
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