TCM Pick Of The Day

Tuesday 9 PM

Stalag 17

A POW camp in Germany, 1944. Somebody is tipping off the Germans to GI escape attempts, and everybody in Barracks 4 knows who the informer is: It has to be the cynical camp hustler Sgt. Sefton, who lives very comfortably by trading with the German guards and making less-than-generous deals with his fellow prisoners.

Just one problem: everybody is wrong. And now it's up to Sefton to uncover the real informer, preferably without getting the whole barracks shot in the process.





Another classic from writer-director Billy Wilder. While the low comedy scenes have not aged well, Stalag 17's black humor would be a major influence on both Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, among others. The film would be directly reworked for TV as Hogan's Heroes, which is essentially Stalag 17 crossed with The Great Escape.

William Holden won a Best Actor Oscar as the sleazy but ultimately redeemable con man Sefton, at first looking out for #1 but eventually forced to become a hero in spite of himself. And in a brilliant stroke, Wilder cast fellow director Otto Preminger as the camp commandant. Preminger steals every scene he's in, and even nabbed a supporting Oscar nomination for himself.
















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Watch for the prisoner who reads the letter from his wife and keeps saying "I believe it". That's Edmund Trzcinski, who was a prisoner in the real Stalag 17 and later co-wrote the Broadway play the film was based on.

Edmund Trzcinski (left)