by Bob Harris
Columnist

I have heard this phrase several times. “The movie wasn’t as good as the book.” Now if you haven’t read the book, you take that at its word.

Now, I decided to go backwards on this though and saw some movies that were based on a book and then went back to read them. For example: “The Great Escape” by Paul Brickhill. I’ve seen this movie 100 times and when it pops on TV I’m late for whatever appointment I’m supposed to be going to. It’s a true story of a German prisoner of war camp with its inmates planning an escape by digging three tunnels at once that could possibly release 250 prisoners into the woods of occupied Poland outside of Stala III prison camp during World War II. The movie follows the book pretty close except for one incident. There was never a motorcycle chase where a P.O.W. (Steve McQueen) tried to jump a barbed wire fence to flee into Switzerland. It never happened. The rest of the film stuck pretty much to the book, except the Germans actually found the tunnel in the shower, they escaped through the tunnel under the stove. The tunnel the Germans found in the barracks was actually the one they escaped though. When they found the opening after the escape they blew up the tunnel but had used so much dynamite it blew the roof off the barracks. The three tunnels had names. Tom, Dick and Harry. Later, there would be a 4th named George that was not mentioned in the film. The camp was liberated before that tunnel was finished. There was a brilliant escape from the same camp earlier using a wooden gymnastic horse. We can talk about that later.

Another favorite movie of mine was the poker classic “The Cincinnati Kid” again with Steve McQueen. As I took a look at the credits of the film I noticed it was based on the book of the same name by Richard Jessup. What a difficult book that was to find. The Library finally found it for me, they tracked it down in Crookston at the public library there. It was only 152 pages and only took a day to read. It was slightly different than the film with a subtle name change and a little more development of some of the minor characters. For those of you who know poker, Karl Malden’s character of “Shooter” announces the rules at his big game table including “no string” bets. Guess what the first and most of the bets were? “String bets”! Also, a piece of worthless information, the last hand had Edgar G. Robinson winning with a flush and Steve McQueen losing with a full house of aces and 10’s. Head to Head play, the odds of that ever happening is placed at more than 43 billion to one. If those two could hold out you wouldn’t see that happen for another 443 years.

I’ll touch on one more. “The Mouse that Roared.” It was first in a series of “Mouse” books by Leonard Wibberley. The Duchy of Fenwick a small county in Europe is going broke and so they decide to take advantage of attacking the U.S. with a huge army of 26. They know they’ll loose and get help from the Americans and their country will be pulled out of financial ruin. Well, they actually win the war after New York City is deserted for a Civil defense test. The movie stars Peter Sellers in three different roles (which he often did). The film is very light-hearted, fun movie to watch especially Sellers and how the overall message is Wibberley’s stand to regulate nuclear weapons. In the book however, one of the Grand Fenwick soldiers dies. That doesn’t happen in the film. Since Fenwicks main source of income was wine-making, Wibberley wanted to call the book “The Wrath of Grapes.” Like Star Wars, Leonard Wibberley would go on to first write a prequel called “Beware of the Mouse”, three sequels The Mouse on the Moon, The Mouse on Wall Street and the Mouse that saved the West. I’ve read “Roared” and “Moon”. If you know where I can find the other three let me know via e-mail below.

bob.harris@mwcradio.com