Tagged: The Great Escape
Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape
Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape (1963)
Vitals
Richard Attenborough as Roger Bartlett, aka “Big X”, RAF Squadron Leader and escape artist
Sagan-Silesia (now Żagań, Poland), Spring 1944
Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today would have been the 100th birthday of English actor and director Richard Attenborough, born August 29, 1923 in Cambridge. One of this prolific stage and screen actor’s best-known roles was leading the ensemble cast of The Great Escape (1963) as Roger Bartlett, aka “Big X”, the Royal Air Force officer who organized the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III.
Bartlett was based on real-life RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, whose birthday was only one day after (and 13 years before) the actor who portrayed him—born August 30, 1910 in Springs, Transvaal, South Africa. Bushell pursued his secondary education in England, first at Wellington College before studying law at Cambridge, where the athletic scholar distinguished himself as a champion skier. A skiing accident scarred Bushell’s left eye for the rest of his life, represented in The Great Escape by a scar painted over Richard Attenborough’s opposite eye as the fictionalized Roger Bartlett.
“He was a big, tempestuous man with broad shoulders and the most chilling, pale-blue eyes I ever saw,” Paul Brickhill described Bushell in his excellent 1950 chronicle The Great Escape, which formed the basis for the film of the same name. “After it had been sewn up, the corner of his eye drooped permanently, and the effect on his look was strangely sinister and brooding.”
The adventurous Bushell yearned to fly and was commissioned as a Royal Air Force officer in 1932. He continued practicing law, defending fellow RAF fliers including Paddy Byrne, with whom he would eventually be imprisoned at Stalag Luft III. After England entered World War II, Bushell was given command of No. 92 Squadron and promoted to Squadron Leader (OF-3). In May 1940, Bushell was leading his squadron against their first enemy engagement and damaged two German planes before he himself was shot down, crash-landing his Supermarine Spitfire fighter in occupied France. The downed Bushell was quickly captured by the Germans and transferred into a prisoner-of-war camp for Allied airmen. “If the Germans had realized what a troublesome man they had caught, they would possibly have shot him then,” Brickhill editoralized. Continue reading
James Coburn in The Great Escape
James Coburn as Louis Sedgwick in The Great Escape (1963)
Vitals
James Coburn as Louis Sedgwick, Australian RAAF Flying Officer
Sagan-Silesia (Zagan, Poland), Spring 1944
Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of James Coburn, the prolific and reliable Nebraska-born star who grew to fame through memorable appearances in the ’60s, including the requisite Westerns and war films including the 1963 ensemble epic The Great Escape, dramatizing the real-life mass breakout of more than six dozen Allied airmen from Stalag Luft III during World War II. Ultimately, there were three successful escapees; of the 73 captured, 50 were summarily executed on Hitler’s direct orders.
Coburn portrayed the fictional Australian officer Louis Sedgwick, an amalgamation of the camp “manufacturer” Johnny Travis (RAF) and Dutch flying ace Bram “Bob” van der Stok, one of the three successful escapees who made his getaway, crossing much of occupied Europe with the help of French Resistance networks. Continue reading
Allied Uniforms of The Great Escape
Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, Nigel Stock, and Gordon Jackson in The Great Escape (1963)
Today marks the 75th anniversary of “the great escape”, the mass breakout of allied airmen from the Luftwaffe-operated Stalag Luft III in Sagan-Silesia—now Zagan—in Poland on March 24, 1944. Of the 76 men who escaped, only three made it to freedom and 50 of the group were murdered by the Nazis in retaliation.
Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson
Paul Brickhill, one of the Allied officers who had worked on the various tunnels used for the escape, wrote the definitive account of prison camp life, the famous March 1944 breakout, and the subsequent fallout in The Great Escape, published in 1950.
Thirteen years later, a star-studded cast reenacted the incident in The Great Escape, a now-classic war movie that dramatized this real-life story of heroism, humor, and tragedy.
Today’s post—coinciding both with the 75th anniversary of the escape and the 89th birthday of the film’s star Steve McQueen—examines the uniforms of the Allied airmen, sorted by each major character’s surname. Continue reading
James Garner as Hendley in The Great Escape
James Garner as Flight Lieutenant Hendley in The Great Escape (1963)
Vitals
James Garner as Robert Hendley, American-born RAF Flight Lieutenant and “scrounger”
Sagan-Silesia (Żagań, Poland), Spring 1944
Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson
Background
Steve McQueen’s daring Captain Hilts may get all the glory of The Great Escape‘s legacy, but James Garner’s affable and resourceful “scrounger” Hendley remains one of my favorite characters from any war movie.
Steve McQueen as Hilts in The Great Escape
Steve McQueen as the unflappable Capt. Hilts in The Great Escape (1963).
This weekend marked the 69th anniversary of “The Great Escape”, the mass escape of allied airmen from the German-controlled Stalag Luft III in Lower Silesia. The escape, which involved the efforts of 600 men, achieved the goal of RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell to “make life hell for the Hun.”
In 1963, the story was filmed by the Mirisch Company as The Great Escape.
Vitals
Steve McQueen as Capt. Virgil Hilts, U.S. Army Air Forces pilot and escape artist
Sagan-Silesia (Zagan, Poland), Spring 1944
Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson
Background
If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve heard of The Great Escape and have hopefully seen it roughly a hundred times in your life. Continue reading