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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

If you've never seen Stalag 17 (1953), you couldn't recognize the looped lightcord that Peter Graves the barracks spy used to communicate with Sig Ruman the Nazi. Like the tennis-themed lighter in Strangers on a Train, though, it was the kind of picture clue that seems painfully obvious if you have seen the film, because it figures so importantly in the plot.

William Holden is perfectly sour as the camp's wheeler-dealer, Sefton, a role he hated and won an Oscar for. But it's the comic hijinx that quiz winners commented on. Quiz champeen Wayne Palmer wrote:

"For me, what I found disappointing was Wilder's choice to mix bad comedy with the drama. The whole Russian women prisoner bits seemed to be inserted just to lighten up an otherwise solid drama. I realize that being made so soon after the war, Wilder probably felt that he needed to add some humor to what was still a dark and recent episode in the minds of many. But watching it 50 years on, the comedy bits don't work for me."

On the same day, a thousand miles away from Wayne (in more ways than one), regular quiz winner Hank Parmer wrote: "Good thing there's the inimitable Robert Strauss as 'Animal," with straight man Harvey Lembeck in his pre-Eric von Zipper days, to provide some comic relief to what's really a very dark story." (Hank also pointed out something I hadn't noticed about the career of James Arness's brother: "Funny how Graves seemed to alternate between major roles in some of the worst sci-fi of the time, like Killers from Space and Beginning of the End, and bit parts in great films like this one and Night of the Hunter.")

And a regular quiz winner who shall go nameless wrote: "Last time I watched the film I recall that an actor named Michael Moore is halfway down the final list of opening acting credits. There's probably a joke in there somewhere about the other prisoners griping about having to make the escape tunnels twice as wide, but I haven't the time or patience to indulge such a feeble wheeze."

So thanks for writing my blog for me this time, guys!

And congratulations to the handful of winners who came through on an admittedly tough quiz: Wayne Palmer, Mike Larson, E. Yarber, Bill Hearne, and Hank Parmer. And biggest congrats to Gus Mastrapa, who wins the grand prize this week: The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great by Ray Bennett, M.D. (Sorry, Gus, at this blog all prizes are final-- no returns accepted.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 12, 2006 12:50 AM

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