Operation Crossbow

TCM's Dave Karger introduces Operation Crossbow, 1965.

TCM's Dave Karger introduces Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Top-billed Sophia Loren finally appears, at a boarding house in occupied Holland, where she catches undercover Allied agents George Peppard and Tom Courtenay, not knowing that her German engineer husband is dead or that Peppard is impersonating him, his landlady (Lili Palmer) saving the day, in Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Thirty minutes in, we start meeting Allied officers who’ll undertake the WWII spy mission, first Anthony Quayle and Tom Courtenay waiting, then George Peppard as swaggering American (leading man) Curtis, and Jeremy Kemp as the bothered Brit Bradley, in Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Allied agents Henshaw and Curtis (Tom Courtenay, George Peppard) are dropping into occupied Holland having missed news that their identities are blown, so we cut to spy-master John Mills prepping Bradley (Jeremy Kemp) for a rescue, in the WWII espionage thriller Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Just as the Brits conclude the Nazis may be testing rockets near the Baltic, we join a test pilot (David Hadda) overseen by big German generals (Paul Henreid, Helmut Dantine), Barbara Rutting as the famous German flier Hanna Reitsch, Michael Anderson directing, in Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Opening, the point being that this is a full-scale Carlo Ponti WWII espionage feature, starring his wife Sophia Loren, and lots of people got their names billed before the title; also Churchill (Patrick Wymark) himself is involved, visited by Richard Johnson as Duncan Sandys (a historical figure, actually Churchill’s son-in-law), from Operation Crossbow, 1965.

Allied agents go behind enemy lines to destroy a German missile base during World War II in Operation Crossbow (1965) starring George Peppard & Sophia Loren.