It tells the story of a group of American airmen confined with 40,000 prisoners in a World War II German prisoner-of-war camp "somewhere on the Danube".

Their compound holds 630 sergeants representing many different aircrew positions, but the film focuses on one particular barracks, where the men come to suspect that one of their number is an informant.

The film stars William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance, along with Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Richard Erdman, Michael Moore, Sig Ruman, and Otto Preminger.

He also creates profitable ventures that distract from the mundanity of camp life: from organizing rat races for gambling, to an improvised distillery for brewing alcohol, to a makeshift telescope to spy on the Russian women from a neighboring compound.

Their jovial guard, Feldwebel Schulz, secretly retrieves hidden messages from a hollow black queen on the chessboard, and straightens the looped cord of a dangling light bulb, which serves as a signal between himself and the informant.

During the Christmas Eve celebrations, Price steathily switches out the black queen, reads the hidden message, and then resets the signal.

The film was adapted by Wilder and Edwin Blum from the Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, which was based on their experiences as prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria.

Among the notable actors in the cast, John Ericson made his Broadway debut as Sefton, as did Mark Roberts as Dunbar and Allan Melvin as Reed.

[4] The prison camp set was built on the John Show Ranch in Woodland Hills, on the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley.

[9] Harrison's Reports wrote, "Thanks to the brilliant handling of the subject matter by producer-director Billy Wilder, and to the fine acting of the entire cast, the picture has been fashioned into a first-rate entertainment".

[10] William Brogdon of Variety felt "The raucous flavor will set well with male viewers and even the distaffers should find it acceptable entertainment most of the time.

"[11] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote Wilder "preserved [the] essential humor and tragedy with no dulling of its corrosive edges, though he has cleaned it up in both language and situations.

Lustiness has pretty much replaced bawdiness, and while the fun may not yet be all in the "good clean" class, it is at least expressed in the accepted and more palatable Hollywood medium of hard-boiled comedy.

The website's consensus states: "Stalag 17 survives the jump from stage to screen with flying colors, thanks to Billy Wilder's typically sterling direction and a darkly funny script.

His acceptance speech is one of the shortest on record ("thank you, thank you"); the TV broadcast had a strict cutoff time, which forced Holden's quick remarks.