The Prisoner of Shark Island
Encyclopedia
The Prisoner of Shark Island is a 1936
1936 in film
The year 1936 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May 29 - Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film Fury, starring Spencer Tracy and Bruce Cabot, is released.*November 6 - first Porky Pig animated cartoon...

 film loosely based on the life of Samuel Mudd
Samuel Mudd
Samuel Alexander Mudd I, M.D. was an American physician who was convicted and imprisoned for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the 1865 assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869...

, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...

, directed by John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

, and starring Warner Baxter
Warner Baxter
Warner Leroy Baxter was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona , for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent movies...

 and Gloria Stuart
Gloria Stuart
Gloria Frances Stuart was an American actress, activist, painter, bonsai artist and fine printer. Over a Hollywood career which spanned, with a long break in the middle, from 1932 until 2004, she appeared on stage, television, and film, for which she was best-known...

.

Plot

A few short hours after the assassination of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 (Frank McGlynn Sr.
Frank McGlynn Sr.
Frank McGlynn, Sr. was an American stage and film actor who found success later in life playing Abraham Lincoln.-Early life:...

), Dr. Samuel Mudd
Samuel Mudd
Samuel Alexander Mudd I, M.D. was an American physician who was convicted and imprisoned for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the 1865 assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869...

 (Baxter) gives treatment to a man with a broken leg who shows up at his door. Mudd does not know that the president has been assassinated and the man who he is treating is John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...

 (Francis McDonald
Francis McDonald
Francis McDonald was an American actor whose career spanned 52 years. Although never really a headlining actor, he made 41 film and television appearances between 1913 and 1965, appearing in films such as The Temptress in 1926 with Greta Garbo...

). Mudd is arrested for being an accessory in the assassination and is sent to prison on the Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas
The Dry Tortugas are a small group of islands, located at the end of the Florida Keys, USA, about west of Key West, and west of the Marquesas Keys, the closest islands. Still further west is the Tortugas Bank, which is completely submerged. The first Europeans to discover the islands were the...

, described as in the West Indies and referred to in the film as "America's own Devil's Island
Devil's Island
Devil's Island is the smallest and northernmost island of the three Îles du Salut located about 6 nautical miles off the coast of French Guiana . It has an area of 14 ha . It was a small part of the notorious French penal colony in French Guiana until 1952...

".

After a period of ill treatment due to his notoriety, his skills as a doctor are requested by the Commandant of the prison. The island has been in the grip of a yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

 epidemic and the official prison doctor has fallen ill. Dr. Mudd takes charge with the blessing of the Commandant and the cooperation of the soldier guards, and the yellow jack epidemic subsides.

In the end he receives a pardon and is allowed to return home.

Historical accuracy

The film portrays Dr. Mudd as an entirely innocent victim and scapegoat, while the actual historical details of the case and his ties to Booth cast a shadow on his true innocence.

The historically accurate parts of the movie are (1) that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, (2) by John Wilkes Booth who sought help for a broken leg from Dr. Samuel Mudd, (3) who was subsequently tried before a military commission, found guilty of aiding Booth, and sent to an island military prison, and (4) was a hero in treating those felled in a yellow fever epidemic.

Other than this, the movie is historically inaccurate from beginning to end. Dr. Mudd's wife was named Sarah Frances, not Peggy. They had four children at the time, none of whom resembled in any way the one cute little daughter in the movie. Mrs. Mudd's father was dead, not alive and kicking as in the movie. None of the trial testimony is accurately portrayed. There is no Shark Island. Dr. Mudd was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas islands, Florida. One of Dr. Mudd's slaves did not follow him to prison, and try to help him escape from there. Dr. Mudd's wife and her father did not command a boat in an attempt to rescue Dr. Mudd from prison. Dr. Mudd did not engage in a running gun battle while trying to escape to his wife's fictional boat. He did try to escape a couple of months after arriving at Fort Jefferson by hiding aboard a visiting ship, but he was quickly discovered and returned to the fort. He was not placed in an underground pit as punishment for trying to escape. His punishment for trying to escape was 3 months in a large empty ground level gun room with four other prisoners. The men were allowed out of the gun room every day to work around the fort, etc.

Cast

  • Warner Baxter
    Warner Baxter
    Warner Leroy Baxter was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona , for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent movies...

     - Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd
  • Gloria Stuart
    Gloria Stuart
    Gloria Frances Stuart was an American actress, activist, painter, bonsai artist and fine printer. Over a Hollywood career which spanned, with a long break in the middle, from 1932 until 2004, she appeared on stage, television, and film, for which she was best-known...

     - Mrs. Peggy Mudd
  • Claude Gillingwater
    Claude Gillingwater
    Claude Benton Gillingwater was an American stage and screen actor. He first appeared on the stage then in 92 films between 1918 and 1939....

     - Col. Jeremiah Milford Dyer
  • Arthur Byron - Mr. Erickson
  • O. P. Heggie - Dr. MacIntyre
  • Harry Carey - Commandant of Fort Jefferson
  • Francis Ford
    Francis Ford (actor)
    Francis Ford was a prolific film actor, writer, and director. He was the older brother of film director John Ford. He also appeared in many of John Ford's movies, including Young Mr. Lincoln and The Quiet Man.He starred in the 1912 two-reeler The Deserter by Thomas H. Ince and acted in over 400...

     - Cpl. O'Toole
  • John McGuire - Lt. Lovett
  • Francis McDonald
    Francis McDonald
    Francis McDonald was an American actor whose career spanned 52 years. Although never really a headlining actor, he made 41 film and television appearances between 1913 and 1965, appearing in films such as The Temptress in 1926 with Greta Garbo...

     - John Wilkes Booth
  • Douglas Wood - Gen. Ewing
  • John Carradine
    John Carradine
    John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...

     - Sgt. Rankin
  • Joyce Kay - Martha Mudd
  • Fred Kohler Jr. - Sgt. Cooper
  • Ernest Whitman
    Ernest Whitman
    Ernest Whitman was an African American television and film actor....

     - 'Buck' Milford
  • Paul Fix
    Paul Fix
    Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981...

    - David Herold

Adaptations

  • The film inspired a radio adaptation on the "Encore Radio Theater" in 1946.
  • The film also inspired the western film, Hellgate (1952).
  • A television adaptation The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd was released in 1980.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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