The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

Directed by

John Ford

Genre

drama film, prison film, docudrama

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 34m

Rated

G

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 61 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A doctor is convicted for aiding John Wilkes Booth after the Lincoln assassination and sent to a harsh island prison. The film follows his unjust imprisonment and struggle for survival.

tensehistoricalsombergrittyslow-burnunjustbleakbased-on-true-story

What happens

The Prisoner of Shark Island is a 1936 American drama film that presents a dramatized life of Maryland physician Samuel Mudd who treated the injured presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth and later spent time in prison after his unanimous conviction for being one of Booth's accomplices. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, was directed by John Ford and starred Warner Baxter and Gloria Stuart. Twentieth Century Pictures, before it merged with Fox, purchased the rights to the book The Life of Dr. Mudd by Nettie Mudd Monroe, the doctor's daughter. The film's credits, however, make no reference to Monroe or her book. Modern sources state that Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century's vice-president in charge of production, got the idea to make the film after he read an article in Time magazine about the prison camp for political prisoners on the Dry Tortugas island. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• Fury (1936)
• Road Gang (1936)
• I'd Give My Life (1936)
• The Crime of Dr. Forbes (1936)
• Prison Shadows (1936)
• Jailbreak (1936)
• Living Dangerously (1936)
• The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd (1980)