Bill Ash escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film "The Great Escape"". The character Hilts, nicknamed "The Cooler King" because of the time he spends in the prison camp's punishment block (which the prisoners call the "cooler") for his persistent escape attempts, steals a motorbike and tries to escape to Switzerland but is caught while using it to jump
The Escape (1944 film) The Escape (1944 film) The Escape (Spanish:La fuga ) is a 1944 Mexican historical adventure film directed by Norman Foster and starring Esther Fernandez, Ricardo Montalban and Carlos Orellana. It is based on a novel by Guy de Maupassant. The sets were designed by the art director José Rodríguez Granada. Fernandez's success in the film secured her a contract from the Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures. The film is set during the French Intervention in Mexico. As the Republican forces of Benito Juarez close in on Mexico City, a group of pro-Imperial supporters flee on a stagecoach to the port city