According to Hayley Mills, this is the film that revived her father's flagging career - Hobson's Choice was a critical hit but maybe not so much with audiences. Based on Pat Reid's book, with him as technical adviser, and filmed at the castle itself in Germany, the events depicted are true, and so showcase the remarkably ingenious and brave ways in which prisoners tried - and succeeded - in escaping - 'Time Out' were unable to resist describing it as 'escapist entertainment'.
With John Mills are Eric Portman, Lionel Jeffries, Bryan Forbes, Frederick Valk, Denis Shaw, Christopher Rhodes (the tall one), Richard Wattis, Ian Carmichael (by no means his debut), Theodore Bikel, Anton Diffring. Hamilton and Ivan Foxwell adapted it though, unusually, the dialogue is credited to William Douglas-Home. (He had written a hit play 'The Reluctant Debutante' in the same year, with Anna Massey and Wilfred Hyde-White, which had a long West End Run before transferring to Broadway, and was filmed by Vincente Minnelli in 1958. It was remade all over the world and latterly as What a Girl Wants in 2003, with Colin Firth.)
The score is by Francis Chagrin, Gordon Dines filmed it, Peter Mayhew's the editor.
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