The Great Escape (1963)

Angus Lennie: Ives 'The Mole'

Photos 

Quotes 

• Stratwitch : Your name?

  Ives : Ives.

  [Strachwitz looks through his prisoner profiles] 

  Stratwitch : Ives... Ives... Oh, yes. Archibald Ives. Scot. The photograph doesn't do justice.

  Ives : I'd like to see one of you under similar circumstances.

• Hilts : What do they call a mole in Scotland?

  Ives : A mole?

  Hilts : Aye.

• Ives : [listening to Hilts play catch with himself in the cooler]  What did you do in the States? Play baseball?

  Hilts : No, I was in college. Say, Ives?

  Ives : Aye?

  Hilts : How many escapes have you tried?

  Ives : Ach, four over, seven under.

  Hilts : Tunnel man, huh?

  Ives : Sure, I'm that.

  Hilts : How tall are you, Ives?

  Ives : 5'4". Why?

  Hilts : Oh, just wondering.

  Ives : What did you do in college, study physical education?

  Hilts : Chemical engineering. Did a little bike riding, though.

  Ives : Bicycles?

  Hilts : Motorcycles. You know, flat tracks, county fairs. Picked up a buck here and there. Helped pay my tuition.

  Ives : Oh, I did a wee bit of racing myself. In Scotland.

  Hilts : Bikes?

  Ives : No, horse racing. Jockey.

• Hilts : You know the kind of clay and gravel we've got here in the compound?

  Ives : Aye.

  Hilts : How many feet do you think you could get through in, say, eight hours?

  Ives : I could cut through this stuff here like the bit on the end of an auger. But you know it's not the digging. It's the shoring up with wood and getting the dirt out. That's what you have to worry about.

  Hilts : No, it isn't, Ives. You don't have to worry about that.

  Ives : But how are you going to get the dirt out?