A solid, likeable leading man with a talent for comedy and action roles, Brian Keith was very successful throughout his career, working in both film and television. The son of character actor Robert Keith, he made his film debut at the age of 3 in the silent Pied Piper Malone (1924). He made another movie that year, then wasn+t seen again until he had an uncredited bit as a student in Knute Rockne, All American (1940). He continued to work as an extra during the 1940s until he broke through with fourth billing in the Charlton Heston Western Arrowhead (1953). Although his film career progressed rapidly throughout the decade, he also took on his first TV assignment in 1955-56 as the lead in a series about an anti-communist freelance writer, The Crusader. From then on, Keith divided his time between the big and small screens, jumping from made-for-TV movies to Doris Day comedies to long-running series to Westerns and crime movies. The veteran of nearly a dozen broadcast series, he's most famous as the single dad on the popular sitcom Family Affair, which ran from 1966 to 1971. His last TV assignment was as the voice of Peter Parker+s Uncle Ben in the cartoon show Spider-Man.

In The McKenzie Break, Keith had one of his more offbeat film roles. Directed by Lamont Johnson, this World War II POW escape drama had a twist - it's the Germans who are the prisoners, trying to escape their British captors in a Scottish camp (it was actually filmed in Ireland). Keith plays an intelligence officer trying to outwit his wily Nazi charges, led by Helmut Griem as a ruthless Hitler youth who rose through the ranks to become a U-boat commander. Instead of focusing on the prisoners' escape attempt, director Lamont Johnson and writer William Norton chose to play up the cat-and-mouse game between Keith and Griem, creating a tense, psychological drama with an unexpected outcome.

Keith isn't the only TV veteran in this production. Johnson also started off on the small screen, with credits on thirteen series prior to this picture, including Dr. Kildare, The Twilight Zone, and Have Gun Will Travel. After The McKenzie Break, he divided his time between movies and television, directing a number of made-for-TV pictures, including the award-winning That Certain Summer (1972) and Lincoln (1988). Johnson has also worked on such popular television series as Felicity. Screenwriter William Norton had at least one noteworthy TV credit, as a writer for the popular 1960s Western series The Big Valley. Producers Arthur Gardner and Jules Levy also worked on that show, and they first collaborated with Johnson on the Western series The Rifleman.

Several of the supporting cast were also TV veterans, although not well known to U.S. audiences. Ian Hendry, cast as the film's ineffectual camp commanding officer, had six popular English TV series among his credits as well as a British Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nomination (for Get Carter, 1971). Jack Watson (Gen. Ben Kerr in The McKenzie Break) has more than a dozen TV credits, including a long recurring role on the popular British soap opera, Coronation Street, which has been airing since 1960. Although he has done some television in his native Germany (notably the Fassbinder-directed mini-series Berlin Alexanderplatz), Griem is best known to stateside audiences as the bisexual aristocrat Maximilian in Cabaret (1972).

Director: Lamont Johnson
Producers: Arthur Gardner, Jules Levy
Screenplay: William Norton, based on the novel by Sidney Shelley
Cinematography: Michael Reed
Editing: Tom Rolf
Production design: Frank White
Original Music: Riz Ortolani
Cast: Brian Keith (Capt. Jack Connor), Helmut Griem (Capt. Willi Schlutter), Ian Hendry (Maj. Perry), Jack Watson (Gen. Kerr), Horst Janson (Lt. Neuchi).
C-107m. Letterboxed.

by Rob Nixon