Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is the wartime adventure thriller, "The Great Escape," directed by John Sturgis, and released in 1963.

The screenplay by James Clavell and WR Burnett, is based on the 1950 book of the same name by Australian author, Paul Brickhill, who is a participant in the events the film presents.

The large ensemble cast of "The Great Escape," is headed by Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough, and includes James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasant's, James Coburn, Hannis Messemer, David McCallum, and Gordon Jackson.

In 1942, the Third Reich opens a new prison camp under the authority of the Luftwaffe, or the German Air Force, for prisoners of war from the Allied Air Forces who have repeatedly escaped from German prison camps in other parts of occupied Europe.

The Camp, Stalag Luft III, located in a forest clearing, is built to be escape proof, with two nine foot barbed wire fences, machine gun towers, and a fully armed garrison of German troops.

As new groups of prisoners arrive, The Kommandant, Luftwaffe Colonel Von Luger, warns senior British Officer, RAF Group Captain Ramsey, the highest ranking POW in the camp, that any escape attempts will be dealt with severely.

Ramsey replies that all officers have a sworn duty to attempt to escape, and otherwise harass the enemy during their confinement.

As new POWs arrive, some of them immediately seek ways to escape, each of which is foiled by the guards.

An American, Army Air Force Captain, Hilts, finds a blind spot between two guard towers and steps over the warning wire after a baseball, provoking a short burst of machine gunfire.

He is put in solitary confinement in a building called "The Cooler," where he becomes friends with another would-be escapee, a Scottish RAF line Officer Archie Ives.

Meanwhile, RAF squadron leader, Roger Bartlett, who has been the brains behind many escape attempts, arrives at the camp and forms the ex organization, a group of POWs who work together on a daring scheme.

Their plan is to execute a simultaneous mass escape of 250 prisoners, with each supplied with civilian clothing, and forged papers to get them safely through Germany, and ultimately back to ally territory.

With each man using his own specialized skills in a common effort, the POWs begin digging three tunnels, and making all the other preparations for the escape, while attempting to ensure their German guards remain unaware of the plan.

Paul Brickhill was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1916.

He was working as a journalist when the Second World War began, and enlisted as a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941.

He was assigned to a squadron fighting in North Africa, and was shot down in Tunisia in 1943, becoming a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft III in lower Silesia shortly afterwards.

He became involved in the plans for a mass escape, initially as a stooge or look-out, then as a digger, until he developed claustrophobia.

He then provided security for the forgers.

This claustrophobia prevented him from taking part in the escape, but afterwards, he and another POW, Conrad Norton, documented the details of the plan.

They also collected other stories of prison camp escapes from their fellow prisoners, recording them in tiny handwriting on whatever scraps of paper they could find.

After the war, Brickhill returned to journalism and transcribed the notes he and Norton had taken, which became the basis for their 1946 book, "Escape to Danger."

Later, the British publisher, Evans Brothers asked Brickhill to write a book about the mass escape from Stalag Luft Dry, a book published as "The Great Escape" in 1950.

Director John Sturgis first read the story when the book was serialized in "The Reader's Digest."

He later said, "It was the perfect embodiment of why our side won."

Here was the German military machine, the sparkling uniforms, and the absolute obedience to orders.

On the other side of the wire, there were men from every country, every background, makeup, and language, doing everything they pleased.

With no arbitrary rules, they formulated an organization, which eventually clobbered the German war machine.

Although Director John Sturges was enthusiastic about the possibility of a movie version of The Great Escape from the outset, bringing the story to the screen proved to be another example of how things got done in Hollywood during the last years of the studio era.

Sturges was working at MGM Studios when he discovered the story, but he couldn't convince Louis B. Mayer or other studio executives to take a chance on it.

They argued that it would have to be a big movie with a large cast and therefore expensive.

But there were no women in the story to draw on female audiences.

And to make things worse, it had a downbeat ending.

After a string of successful movies, including Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1957 and Bad Day at Black Rock in 1955, Sturges left MGM in 1959 to partner with the Mirisch Company to make the classic western, The Magnificent Seven in 1960.

Among the cast were Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, who all later appeared in The Great Escape.

The Magnificent Seven proved what Sturges could do with a big story and an ensemble cast.

That along with the director's obvious enthusiasm with the project, finally convinced Paul Brickhill to sell Sturges the rights after Sturges promised not to take liberties with the story of the sort that were, and often still are, all too common in studio motion pictures.

The Great Escape begins with this notice; "This is a true story.

Although the characters are composites of real men and time and place have been compressed, every detail of the escape is the way it really happened."

This is not entirely true.

Although most of the events did really happen and the characters were composites based on the actual participants in the escape plan, some liberties were in fact taken.

Most significant among these was the inclusion of Americans as major figures in the escape to allow American stars to be cast and enhance the film's appeal for American audiences.

Although some American officers were involved in the planning and digging of the tunnels, all American POWs were moved outta the prison camp seven months before the escape took place.

The only American to take part was a British officer.

The film downplays the heavy involvement of Canadian POWs who made up a quarter of the prisoners involved in preparations for the escape.

Former POWs asked the details about the assistance they received from their home countries be omitted to protect future POWs.

And the filmmakers made no reference to help given to the allied escapees by Germans unsympathetic to the Nazi regime.

Despite the sunny weather shown in the movie, the escape took place in late March, 1944, in bitter cold when snow lay thick on the ground.

The three POWs who successfully escaped German territory on the film are British, Polish, and Australian.

In reality, two were Norwegian and one was Dutch.

Over the course of the movie's production, six writers worked to produce 11 different screenplays, each taking a somewhat different approach to telling a very complex story.

The final revision was undertaken to placate Steve McQueen, who was upset that his character, Captain Virgil Hilts, The Cooler King, virtually disappears for about 30 minutes in the middle of the picture.

He walked off the set and didn't return until James Garner and Donald Pleasence met with him to discuss his grievances.

As a result, Hilts' character was given more attention and the spectacular motorcycle stunt at the border, which had no basis in fact, was added to the script.

Pleasence later said, "I hadn't realized things like this go on in Hollywood, being an obedient English actor from the theater mostly.

When it came time to film the motorcycle chase footage, McQueen, who was an experienced and expert cyclist appeared both, his Hilts and as at least one of the Germans chasing him.

But when it came time to do the stunt of jumping the border fence, McQueen was considered too big a star to take the risk.

The stunt was instead performed by McQueen cycling buddy, Bud Ekins, who had modified two British Triumph motorcycles to look like German motorcycles of the period.

Although he was often difficult to work with during the filming, McQueen's performance won accolades from critics, even those few who were otherwise indifferent to the movie itself.

Judith Christ, in a review, for the New York Herald Tribune called The Great Escape a first rate adventure film, fascinating in its detail, suspenseful in its plot, stirring in its climax and excellent in performance, and added, "Steve McQueen takes the Honors."

The Cooler King had taken another step towards becoming Hollywood's King of Cool.

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.