Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [50]
A lesser-known fact that was in the book but not the movie was the role the escapees played in helping the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day to succeed—so many Germans were sent to recapture the officers that they were not available to help repel the Allies (in fact, this was one of the reasons the escape had been planned). Many of the Nazis who were involved in the mass execution of fifty of the escapees later stood trial for it at Nuremberg, and the book carried the dedication “To the fifty.”
Sturges immediately saw in the book the possibility of a “big” movie, and he took it to the studio he was with at the time, MGM, which promptly turned it down. Sturges then insisted on a private meeting with the top man, Louis B. Mayer, during which he told him the story of the film and how exciting he thought it could be. Mayer still didn’t go for it, asking who would go see a movie where only three people out of seventy-six make it out alive. Then Mayer asked what the budget for the film would be. When Sturges told him $10 million, an enormous amount for 1950, Mayer said the deal was dead. Sturges later said, “I tried to make it for about eight years before I became an independent, and everybody just smiled and changed the subject.”
It was only after Sturges left MGM and made The Magnificent Seven that he was able to resurrect the project. In 1961, the Mirisch brothers took a meeting with Sturges. Even though The Magnificent Seven had not been an instant box office hit, the film had steadily made money overseas and eventually become profitable, and to the Mirisch brothers that made Sturges a very desirable director. According to Sturges, “If I wanted to direct the telephone book they would have at least given me a hearing.”
They listened to his pitch and gave him the green light if—and they underscored the word if—he could bring it in for under $4 million. According to one observer, “After The Magnificent Seven Sturges believed he could save an enormous amount of money by recreating the German prison camp Stalag Luft III built in Geiselgasteig just outside of Munich in Palm Springs and using locals as extras to play the other prisoners and soldiers not directly involved with the story. And if there were unforeseen problems, once the film was in production, he knew the Mirisches, who had gotten UA to agree to be partners on the project and put up half the money, would have to put up the cost of the overrun rather than losing everything by shutting down the picture.”
The only problem left for Sturges was to actually acquire the rights to the book, which to this point he had not done—a tiny fact he left out of his pitch to the Mirisches. What he thought would be the easiest thing in the world turned out to be anything but. As it turned out, Sturges had not been the first director or producer to try to buy Brickhill’s story. All previous comers had been turned away because of the author’s disdain for Hollywood-style movies that to his mind glorified true war stories with unrealistic battle scenes and always had beautiful women popping up in impossible places just to sell tickets.
Brickhill initially said no to Sturges, but the director kept after the writer, refusing to take no for an answer. He finally convinced Brickhill to at least come to Hollywood from England to talk about it in person, all expenses paid. During their meetings, always at less flashy, more traditional American restaurants like Musso and Frank’s, Sturges poured on the charm, impressing the author with his vast knowledge of World War II and assuring him that the film would remain true to his book.
After winning a conditional okay from the author, Sturges set about getting a treatment written that Brickhill insisted he had to read before he would give final consent. Sturges turned to William Roberts, who, for a hefty fee, wrote a sixty-four-page draft that Brickhill disliked, feeling it was not faithful enough to his book. Walter Newman did the second draft, but never finished,