The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

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(364 ratings)

Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of conspiring… More Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln. Sentenced to hang with the genuine conspirators, Mudd finds his sentence commuted to life imprisonment at the very last moment. He is shipped to Shark Island, a brutal penal colony. Subject to the cruelties of a guard (John Carradine) who hates Mudd because of his "complicity" in Lincoln's death, the doctor suffers the torments of the damned, while outside Shark Island his wife (Gloria Stuart) campaigns desperately to get her husband pardoned. During a Yellow Fever breakout on Shark Island, Dr. Mudd performs heroically to save the survivors. For his humanitarian efforts, Mudd is finally released and reunited with his wife. While the script glosses over the fact that Dr. Mudd had never been officially pardoned by the US government (the pardon wouldn't be granted until years after this film was made), Prisoner of Shark Island strives long and hard to exonerate the man for whom the phrase "your name is mud!" was coined. Dr. Samuel Mudd's story was retold in the 1952 feature Hellgate, with Sterling Hayden as a (fictional) doctor, and in the 1980 TV movie The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, starring Dennis Weaver in the title role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 45 min.
Directed By: John Ford
Written By: Nunnally Johnson
Genres: Western, Drama, Classics

In Theaters: Feb 28, 1936 Wide
On DVD: Feb 14, 2006
Studio: 20th Century Fox

Critic Reviews

Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ford makes a convincing and emotionally telling argument for Mudd's innocence.

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Cast

            Warner Baxter as Dr. Samuel Mudd

            Gloria Stuart as Mrs. Peggy Mudd

            Claude Gillingwater as Col. Dyer

            Arthur Byron as Mr Ericson

            Harry Carey as Commandant of Fort Jefferson "Shark Island"

            O.P. Heggie as Dr. MacIntyre

            Francis Ford as Corporal O'Toole

            John McGuire as Lieutenant Lovett

            Francis McDonald as John Wilkes Booth

            Douglas Wood as Gen. Ewing

            John Carradine as Sgt. Rankin

            Ernest Whitman as Buckland Montmorency "Buck" Tilford

            Frank McGlynn Sr. as Abraham Lincoln

            J.M. Kerrigan as Judge Malben

            Frank Baker
            
            Whitney Bourne
            
            A.S. Byron as Mr. Erickson

            Robert Dudley as Druggist

            Jan Duggan as Actress

            Dick Elliott as Actor

            Paul Fix as David Herold

            Bud Geary
            
            Robert E. Homans as Sergeant

            Fred Kohler Jr. as Sgt. Cooper

            Duke R. Lee
            
            Arthur Loft as Carpetbagger

            Wilfred Lucas as Colonel

            Murdock MacQuarrie as Spangler

            Etta McDaniel as Rosabelle Tilford

            Leila McIntyre as Mrs. Lincoln

            Paul McVey as Hunter

            Frank Shannon as Judge Advocate Holt

            Paul Stanton as Orator

            Harry Strang as Mate

            Cyril Thornton as Maurice O'Laughlin

            Cecil Weston as Mrs. Surratt

            Lloyd Whitlock as Maj. Rathbone

            James Marcus as Blacksmith

            J.P. McGowan as Ship's Captain

            Maurice Murphy as Orderly

            Robert Parrish
            
            Jack Pennick as Signal Man

            Beulah Hall Jones as Blanche

            Joyce Kay as Martha Mudd

            Merrill McCormick as Commandant's Aide

            Harry Carey Sr.
            
See full cast

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