Stalag 17 is a 1953 war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is a traitor. It was adapted from a Broadway play.
Produced and directed by Billy Wilder, it starred William Holden, Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Neville Brand, Harvey Lembeck, and Peter Graves (Strauss and Lembeck both appeared in the original Broadway production); Wilder also cast Otto Preminger in the role of the camp's Commandant.
The film was adapted by Wilder and Edwin Blum from the Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski who were both prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria. (Trzcinski appears in the film as a prisoner.) The play was directed by José Ferrer and was the Broadway debut of John Ericson as Sefton. It began its run in May 1951, continued for 472 performances and was based on the experiences of its authors. The character Sefton was loosely based on Joe Palazzo, a flier in Edmund Trzcinski's prisoner-of-war barracks.
The script was rewritten quite a bit by Wilder and Blum and the film was shot in chronological order (not the usual practice as that method is more expensive and time-consuming). In a featurette made later, members of the cast said that they themselves did not know the identity of the informant until the last three days of shooting.