Oscars flashback: William Holden was Billy Wilder’s third choice for ‘Stalag 17’

William Holden may have won his only Academy Award for Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17,” but he wasn’t the first choice to play Sefton, the cynical sergeant who is a one-man black market at a German POW camp. Originally, Charlton Heston was going to headline the film. Heston was red-hot at the time coming off his flashy starring role in Cecil B. DeMille’s Oscar winning 1952 circus epic “The Great Show on Earth.” But as Wilder and co-writer Edwin Blum were working on the script for the film, which premiered on July 1, 1953 in New York and two weeks later in Los Angeles, the character became darker and more disparaging; They realized Heston wasn’t right for the part

The AFI catalog noted that supposedly Wilder went to Kirk Douglas who had starred in Wilder’s 1951 “Ace in the Hole,” a masterpiece that flopped badly when released. After he turned it down Wilder then approached Holden, who had earned his first Oscar nomination as the ill-fated screenwriter Joe Gillis in Wilder’s landmark 1950 “Sunset Boulevard.”

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When the film was in pre-production, the lauded Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski play “Stalag 17” was on Broadway where it  ran for 472 performances. John Ericson played Sefton and Jose Ferrer won a Tony for directing the production. Holden, though didn’t like the play and even walked out after the first act. But accepted the part after reading he Wilder/Blum screenplay.

“Stalag 17,” which was shot in sequence, is set at a German POW camp near the Danube which houses some 40,000 men including 630 American airman. Though Sefton is a real opportunist in his barrack, he certainly isn’t popular with his fellow prisoners who think he has too much sway with the Nazis. And their fear he is a collaborator seems to come true when he bets that two men who have escaped won’t make it to the forest. They don’t.  When the Germans seem to know more and more about the inmates’ plans, the prisoners take matters in their own hands and beat Sefton to within an inch of his life. After the attack, Sefton decides to find the true Nazi spy among them.

“Writer-director-producer Billy Wilder plays up Sefton’s anti-heroic qualities -his exploitive, easy-going relationship with his German captors and his almost relentless zeal for self-preservation,” noted an article in TCM.com “Then he isolates Sefton within a confined, claustrophobic environment where he is beaten down, creating tension out of the audience’ desire to see him vindicated.”

The stellar supporting cast including Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves and the wonderful Robert Strauss, from the Broadway play, who earned an Oscar nomination as the Betty Grable fixated Animal.  Wilder also reaped an Oscar bid for best director.

Supposedly, Holden thought Burt Lancaster should win best actor for “From Here to Eternity.” He would later say “I felt adequate in ‘Stalag 17,’ but I was never really simpatico with Sefton.” His acceptance speech was short: a simple “thank you.”

The film, which earned some $10 million at the box office, turned Holden into a major star who would go on to make two more movies with Wilder: 1954’s “Sabrina” and 1978’s “Fedora” and headline such classics as 1957’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” 1969’s “The Wild Bunch” and 1976’s “Network,” for which he received a best actor nomination. His last film was Blake Edwards’ 1981 comedy “S.O.B,” which ironically also opened on July 1.

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