Stalag 17
| Stalag 17 | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
| Produced by | Billy Wilder |
| Screenplay by |
Edwin Blum Billy Wilder |
| Based on |
Stalag 17 1951 play by Donald Bevan Edmund Trzcinski |
| Starring |
William Holden Don Taylor Otto Preminger |
| Narrated by | Gil Stratton |
| Music by | Franz Waxman |
| Cinematography | Ernest Laszlo, ASC |
| Edited by | George Tomasini |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,661,530 |
| Box office | $10,000,000 |
Stalag 17 is a 1953 war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is an informant. It was adapted from a Broadway play.
Produced and directed by Billy Wilder, it starred William Holden, Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Neville Brand, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves and Otto Preminger in the role of the camp's commandant. Strauss and Lembeck both appeared in the original Broadway production.
The film was adapted by Wilder and Edwin Blum from the Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski which was based on their experiences as prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria. (Trzcinski appears in the film as a prisoner.) The play was directed by José Ferrer and was the Broadway debut of John Ericson as Sefton. First presented at the Edwin Burke Memorial Theater of The Lambs, a theatrical club, on March 11, 1951 (staged by the authors). It began its Broadway run in May 1951 and continued for 472 performances. The character Sefton was loosely based on Joe Palazzo, a flier in Trzcinski's prisoner-of-war barracks.
The script was rewritten quite a bit by Wilder and Blum and the film was shot in chronological order (not the usual practice as that method is more expensive and time-consuming). In a featurette made later, members of the cast said that they themselves did not know the identity of the informant until the last three days of shooting.
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