Which actor won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in 'Stalag 17'?

William Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Stalag 17.

Billy Wilder’s 1953 film is set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Holden plays J.J. Sefton, a sharp, cynical American airman who trades goods with other prisoners and becomes suspected of being the barracks informant. His character’s apparent selfishness gradually becomes more complicated as the men try to identify the traitor among them.

Stalag 17 was adapted from a Broadway play written by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, who had themselves been prisoners at Stalag 17B in Austria. The film balances suspense and wartime drama with black comedy, a combination that became a hallmark of Wilder’s work.

Holden won at the 26th Academy Awards, honoring films released in 1953. His acceptance speech is famous for its extreme brevity: “Thank you ... thank you.” A common mix-up is associating Holden’s Oscar with Sunset Boulevard, another Wilder film for which he was nominated but did not win.