The Man Who Never Was (1956) on Netflix
Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu devises a plan to mislead the Germans about the Allied invasion. A corpse with false papers, set adrift off Spain, should point them toward Greece, not Sicily.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In 1943 British Intelligence works to draw German forces away from Italy ahead of the Allied invasion of southern Europe. Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu proposes dropping a corpse into the sea off Huelva, Spain, where a known German agent is active. The body would pass as Royal Marine Major William Martin, a courier killed in a plane crash, and the papers it carries would describe an Allied landing in German-occupied Greece instead of Sicily. Senior officers hesitate, and Montagu has to secure Winston Churchill's approval. A medical expert recommends using a man who died of pneumonia, so the corpse will look drowned. Montagu obtains the dead man's father's permission, and the body, sealed in a canister of dry ice, is taken aboard a submarine.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Man Who Never Was (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The real Ewen Montagu makes a cameo as a Royal Air Force air vice-marshal who doubts the plan is feasible. Ben Macintyre described it as a "surreal" moment when the real Montagu addressed his fictional persona, played by Webb.
- Certain accounts claim the true identity of "Major William Martin" was a homeless, alcoholic rat-catcher from Aberbargoed in Wales, Glyndwr Michael, who had died after self-administering a small dose of rat poison.
- In 2002 authors John and Noreen Steele published The Secrets of HMS Dasher, arguing that "Major Martin's" body was really that of seaman John Melville, a casualty of the escort carrier that exploded in the Firth of Clyde. A memorial service later remembered Melville as "a man who most certainly was".
- Peter Sellers, one of the Goons, provided the voice of Winston Churchill in the film, although the character did not appear when The Goon Show later adapted the story.
- The episode of the Irish spy, O'Reilly, is a complete fabrication: the British Security Service actually controlled the German spy network in the UK with its Double-Cross System, though that was still secret when the film was made.
- The film chronicles Operation Mincemeat, the 1943 British intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking the Allied invasion of Sicily would take place elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and is based on the 1953 book by Lt Cmdr Ewen Montagu.
