1936 - THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd

John Ford brings his sophisticated visual skills to the true story of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the man who treated John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of  President Abraham Lincoln.  The film presents Mudd as a man caught up in circumstances beyond his control a victim of a vengeful United States Government.  Mudd was sentenced to Shark Island a penitentiary in Florida where he ended up having to deal with a yellow fever epidemic in the prison. 

The real life story of Dr. Mudd is considerably more complicated.  He apparently did have some contact with three of the conspirators of the Lincoln assassination and didn't report John Wilkes Booth's visit for at least a day.  Never let the truth get in the way of a movie I guess.

In any case, Ford used all of his visual composition skills and along with the skill of his cinematographer Bert Glennon, the film is very impressive to look at.  Ford also got some good performances out of Warner Baxter as Dr. Mudd and in his first appearance in a John Ford film, John Carradine as a sadistic prison guard.   The film is an excellent civil war drama directed by a master director at the peak of his abilities.

 

 

The film was written by Nunnally Johnson one of Hollywood's top screenwriters who had a lot to do with the high quality of the film.  It runs 96 minutes.