On this day in movie history - The Great Escape (1963):

The Great Escape

directed by John Sturges,

written by James Clavell and W. R. Burnett,

based on the book by Paul Brickhill,

was released in the United States on July 2, 1963.
Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Hannes Messemer, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, John Leyton, Angus Lennie, Nigel Stock, Robert Graf, Jud Taylor, Hans Reiser, Harry Riebauer, William Russell, Robert Freitag, Ulrich Beiger, George Mikell, Lawrence Montaigne, Robert Desmond, Til Kiwe, Heinz Weiss, Tom Adams, Karl-Otto Alberty, Arthur Atkinson.

Recommended reading: The Great Escape, by Paul Brickhill (1950):

The Great Escape

By Paul Brickhill.

Filmed as The Great Escape (1963), directed by John Sturges.

Published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Published 1950.

ISBN-10: 0393325792

ISBN-13: 9780393325799

Description:

"One of the great true stories of the war, and one of the greatest escape narratives of all time." – San Francisco Chronicle.

"Absorbing... spine-tingling... puts the average war book so far in the shadow it's not even funny." – Dallas Times Herald.

"For sheer suspense, puts the fictioneers to shame." – Boston Globe.

"A tense, thrilling, fabulous tale." – Philadelphia Inquirer.

They were American and British air force officers in a German prison camp. With only their bare hands and the crudest of homemade tools, they sank shafts, forged passports, faked weapons, and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes. They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from German surveillance.

It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men – every one of them, every minute, every hour, every day and night for more than a year.

Made into the classic 1963 war film of the same name starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough.

16 pages of photographs.