The Great Escape (1963) - Full Cast and Crew

Cast

Steve McQueen

as Hilts 'The Cooler King'

James Garner

as Hendley 'The Scrounger'

as Danny 'Tunnel King'

Donald Pleasence

as Blythe 'The Forger'

James Coburn

as Sedgwick 'Manufacturer'

Hannes Messemer

as Von Luger 'The Kommandant'

David McCallum

as Ashley-Pitt 'Dispersal'

Gordon Jackson

as MacDonald 'Intelligence'

John Leyton

as Willie 'Tunnel King'

Angus Lennie

as Ives 'The Mole'

Nigel Stock

as Cavendish 'The Surveyor'

Robert Graf

as Werner 'The Ferret'

as Haynes ('Diversions')

as Dai Nimmo ('Diversions')

Karl-Otto Alberty

as S.S. Officer Steinach

The Great Escape Movies

The Great Escape is a 1963 American epic war suspense adventure film based on Paul Brickhill's 1950 non-fiction book of the same name. The film depicts a heavily fictionalized version of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III during the Second World War. A fictional, made-for-television sequel, The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, was released in 1988. The film is not a true sequel as it dramatizes the escape itself just as the original film does, although mostly using the real names of the individuals involved (whereas the original film fictionalized them and used composite characters). It depicts the search for the culprits responsible for the murder of the 50 Allied officers.