GREAT ESCAPE, THE 141
in ter est ing a Hollywood studio until he made The Magnificent Seven (1960), a hit
Western based on Akira Kurasawa’s The Seven Samurai and produced by the
Mirisch Com pany. On the strength of that picture, the Mirisch brothers— Walter,
Marvin, and Harold— agreed to back Sturges’s escape movie, and United Artists
signed on to distribute the picture. Sturges hired novelist- screenwriter W. R.
Burnett (The Asphalt Jungle) to adapt Brickhill’s novel to the screen and later hired
James Clavell (King Rat), a former POW in the Pacific, to make script revisions. The
original plan was to film The Great Escape at a POW camp set constructed in the
San Gabriel Mountains near Big Bear Lake, 100 miles east of Hollywood, but Stur-
ges ultimately opted to film in Germany to achieve greater verisimilitude, but also
because the cost of hiring lots of extras at union- mandated rates in California
proved prohibitive (Rubin, 2011, pp. 132–135). Most of the principal cast was
signed by the spring of 1962, with one impor tant change. Richard Harris was sup-
posed to play role of Roger Bartlett, aka “Big X,” the chief escape or ga nizer based
on RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell (1910–1944), but dropped out due to
scheduling conflicts and was replaced by Richard Attenborough.
Production
The four- month Great Escape shoot at Geiselgasteig Studios outside Munich, Bavaria,
started on 4 June 1962, but rainy weather forced Sturges to alter the schedule and
shoot interior scenes from the middle part of the picture first. By mid- July, after
six weeks of rushes, Steve McQueen became unhappy with his part, which he
deemed too small and sketchy. Headstrong and intensely ambitious, McQueen
really wanted to be first among equals in what was supposed to be another Stur-
ges ensemble production. He badgered Sturges and W. R. Burnett but did not get
the script rewrites he wanted, so he went on strike for six weeks. Actually fired at
the end of August, McQueen stayed in the picture after negotiations with Sturges
and United Artists, mediated by his agent Stan Kamen, resolved the situation, and
screenwriter Ivan Moffett was brought in to beef up McQueen’s role. After chal-
lenging and dangerous stunt work with motorcycles and airplanes was completed
in October, the long and arduous shoot fi nally wrapped.
Plot Summary
It is 1943 and the Germans have moved their most escape- prone POWs to a new
high- security POW camp. The commandant, Luftwaffe Col. von Luger (Hannes
Messemer), tells the se nior British officer, Group Captain Ramsey ( James Donald),
“ There will be no escapes from this camp.” The POWs try and fail a number of
times when they first arrive, but eventually accept their fate and fall into a routine.
Meanwhile, Gestapo agents Kuhn (Hans Reiser) and Preissen (Ulrich Beiger) and
SS Lieutenant Dietrich (George Mikell) deliver RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett,
aka “Big X” (Richard Attenborough), a master escape or ga nizer, to the camp. Bartlett
is warned that if he escapes the camp again, he will be killed. Undaunted, Bartlett
immediately begins to plan the greatest escape ever attempted—250 to 300 pris-
oners scattered all over Germany so that massive numbers of German soldiers will
be relegated to searching for escapees rather than being deployed at the front. The