The Great Escape/Trivia

• Executive Meddling:
  • Steve McQueen walked out demanding rewrites and John Sturges considered writing the character out of the story altogether but United Artists informed him they considered McQueen indispensable to the picture's success and financed a new writer to accommodate his demands. This led to a diminished role for Big X, who was supposed to be the main protagonist.
  • The most notable of McQueen's demands was for Hilts to have a scene on a motorcycle, which ended up being one of the most iconic moments of the film.
  • Early on in the production Sturges began receiving memos from United Artists requesting female roles and a Ms. Fanservice scheme was proposed. Sturges would have none of it.
    • several of the characters assault German guards, a thing which real-life prisoners and escapers avoided at all costs as being tantamount inviting execution, or at least a spell in a highly unpleasant German military prison
• Fake Nationality: James Coburn as Sedgwick, the Australian.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • The old professor from Jurassic Park leads the escape.
  • A Bond villain puts their fakes I.D.s together.
  • Jim Rockford gets all the supplies.
  • Lt. MacDonald is Hudson the butler.
  • Illya Kuryakin/Ducky from NCIS is Ashley-Pitt, Big X's right-hand man.
  • Harmonica is the Tunnel King, along with one of the three members of The Magnificent Seven in this film.
• Playing Against Type: Donald Pleasance in a very poignant example.
• Throw It In: Goff's line "No taxation without representation" during the Fourth of July scene was an ad-lib, causing Steve McQueen to do a Double Take.

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