William Holden may have won his only Academy Award for Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17,” but he wasn’t the first choice to play Sefton, the cynical sergeant who is a one-man black market at a German Pow camp. Originally, Charlton Heston was going to headline the film. Heston was red-hot at the time coming off his flashy starring role in Cecil B. DeMille’s Oscar winning 1952 circus epic “The Great Show on Earth.” But as Wilder and co-writer Edwin Blum were working on the script for the film, which premiered on July 1, 1953 in New York and two weeks later in Los Angeles, the character became darker and more disparaging; They realized Heston wasn’t right for the part
The AFI catalog noted that supposedly Wilder went to Kirk Douglas who had starred in Wilder’s 1951 “Ace in the Hole,” a masterpiece that flopped badly when released. After he turned...
The AFI catalog noted that supposedly Wilder went to Kirk Douglas who had starred in Wilder’s 1951 “Ace in the Hole,” a masterpiece that flopped badly when released. After he turned...
- 7/3/2023
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
(Billy Wilder, 1953; Eureka!, DVD/Blu-ray)
After the dissolution of his lengthy collaboration with producer Charles Brackett at Paramount Studios following one of their greatest successes with Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder became his own producer on what many regard as his finest film, that masterly piece of cynical Americana Ace in the Hole. It proved, however, to be a thundering box-office failure, and he was in urgent need of a popular success to restore his fortunes. He chose to film Stalag 17, a comedy-thriller by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, then on its way to completing a triumphant run of 472 performances on Broadway.
Set in a German prisoner-of-war camp for air force sergeants (where the authors had themselves been interned), the play combines a deadly serious plot about a search for a German spy planted among the Americans with a knockabout tale of hungry, frustrated men digging escape tunnels, fighting among themselves,...
After the dissolution of his lengthy collaboration with producer Charles Brackett at Paramount Studios following one of their greatest successes with Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder became his own producer on what many regard as his finest film, that masterly piece of cynical Americana Ace in the Hole. It proved, however, to be a thundering box-office failure, and he was in urgent need of a popular success to restore his fortunes. He chose to film Stalag 17, a comedy-thriller by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, then on its way to completing a triumphant run of 472 performances on Broadway.
Set in a German prisoner-of-war camp for air force sergeants (where the authors had themselves been interned), the play combines a deadly serious plot about a search for a German spy planted among the Americans with a knockabout tale of hungry, frustrated men digging escape tunnels, fighting among themselves,...
- 8/9/2015
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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