The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)
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74% of users liked it
(371 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… 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
- Directed By
- John Ford
- Written By
- Nunnally Johnson
- Genres
- Western, Drama, Classics
Unrated,
- In Theaters
- Feb 28, 1936 Limited
- On DVD
- Feb 14, 2006
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox
Critic Reviews
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Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ford makes a convincing and emotionally telling argument for Mudd's innocence.
See more critic ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)
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Cast
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Warner Baxter
as Dr. Samuel Mudd
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Gloria Stuart
as Mrs. Peggy Mudd
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Claude Gillingwater
as Col. Dyer
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Arthur Byron
as Mr Ericson
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Harry Carey
as Commandant of Fort Jefferson "Shark Isla...
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O.P. Heggie
as Dr. MacIntyre
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Francis Ford
as Corporal O'Toole
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John McGuire
as Lieutenant Lovett
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Francis McDonald
as John Wilkes Booth
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Douglas Wood
as Gen. Ewing
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John Carradine
as Sgt. Rankin
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Ernest Whitman
as Buckland Montmorency "Buck" Tilford
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Frank McGlynn Sr.
as Abraham Lincoln
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J.M. Kerrigan
as Judge Malben
- Frank Baker
- Whitney Bourne
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A.S. Byron
as Mr. Erickson
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Robert Dudley
as Druggist
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Jan Duggan
as Actress
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Dick Elliott
as Actor
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Paul Fix
as David Herold
- Bud Geary
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Robert E. Homans
as Sergeant
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Fred Kohler Jr.
as Sgt. Cooper
- Duke R. Lee
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Arthur Loft
as Carpetbagger
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Wilfred Lucas
as Colonel
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Murdock MacQuarrie
as Spangler
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Etta McDaniel
as Rosabelle Tilford
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Leila McIntyre
as Mrs. Lincoln
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Paul McVey
as Hunter
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Frank Shannon
as Judge Advocate Holt
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Paul Stanton
as Orator
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Harry Strang
as Mate
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Cyril Thornton
as Maurice O'Laughlin
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Cecil Weston
as Mrs. Surratt
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Lloyd Whitlock
as Maj. Rathbone
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James Marcus
as Blacksmith
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J.P. McGowan
as Ship's Captain
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Maurice Murphy
as Orderly
- Robert Parrish
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Jack Pennick
as Signal Man
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Beulah Hall Jones
as Blanche
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Joyce Kay
as Martha Mudd
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Merrill McCormick
as Commandant's Aide
- Harry Carey Sr.
