The Man on the Eiffel Tower

Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" who was "one of the most accomplished actors of the century."... Meredith won several Emmys, was the first man to win two times the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, and was nominated for Academy Awards. Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ida Beth and Canadian-born William George Meredith, M.D. He graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and then attended Amherst College as a member of the Class of 1931. Meredith served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1944 to work on the movie The Story of G.I. Joe, in which he starred as the popular war correspondent Ernie Pyle. In 1933, he became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City. Although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage.
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Irving Allen was a theatrical and cinematic producer and director. He won an Academy Award in 1948 for producing the short movie Climbing the Matterhorn. In the early 1950s he formed Warwick Films with partner Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and relocated to England to leverage film making against a... subsidy offered by the British government. Through the 1950s they each became known as one of the best independent film producers of the day, as the two would sometimes work in tandem, but more often than not on independent projects for their joint enterprise producing multiple projects in a given year. Born in Poland, he entered film as an editor at Universal, Paramount and Republic in 1929. During the 1940s, he made a number of superb shorts, including the Academy Award-nominated Forty Boys and a Song 1941, which he directed. His short films often won more acclaim than his low-budget features. In the late 40s, Allen started concentrating more fully on being a producer. In the early 50s, he led Warwick Films as the 'name producer', making films in both the USA and England, with Albert R.
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Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director. Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, the son of Robert Laughton, a Yorkshire hotel keeper, and his wife Eliza . His mother was a devout Roman Catholic and he attended Stonyhurst... College, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire. He served during World War I first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment. He started work in the family hotel business, while participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Finally allowed by his family to become a drama student at RADA in 1925, Laughton made his first professional stage appearance on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at the London Gaiety Theatre in May. Despite not having the looks for a romantic lead, he impressed audiences with his talent and played classical roles in two plays by Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters.
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