Word: shark
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Since "China Seas" Hollywood has been using its best brains to create unusual and romantic melodramas. "The Prisoner of Shark Island" is undoubtedly one of the best of the cycle. The story is authentic, based on the tragedy of Dr. Mudd's life. Convicted, in reality, by mob hysteria, to life imprisonment, the doctor who had unwittingly taken care of the injured John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin was sent to America's hell hole off the Florida Coast. Warner Baxter, who contributes perhaps the finest performance of his career in this picture, makes Dr. Mudd the epitome of suffering...
...sometimes said that the business of the theatre is to create believable illusions. Fact and fancy are so cleverly interwoven in "The Prisoner of Shark Island" that this production ranks among the first when measured by such a yardstick...
...Prisoner of Shark Island (Twentieth Century-Fox). Suggested to Producer Darryl Zanuck by a story in TIME (Feb. 4, 1935), this picture investigates the sad case of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd. On April 15, 1865, two horsemen galloped up to Dr. Mudd's door in Charles County, Md. and asked for help. One had a broken leg; Dr. Mudd set it. Later that day the horsemen galloped away. The injured one was John Wilkes Booth. For his services, Dr. Mudd found himself suspected of being party to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was court martialed, with seven other...
...Prisoner of Shark Island, Dr. Mudd is Warner Baxter, rolling his eyes with suitable agony at the world's injustice. Remembering the success of Les Misèrables, in which Charles Laughton gave a memorable interpretation of a tireless detective, Producer Zanuck inserted a similar character to add to Dr. Mudd's torments at Fort Jefferson: a lean & mean chief warden (John Carradine). A sharp-tongued, suspicious prison doctor was well played by 0. P. Heggie, who died two weeks after his role was finished. The picture is a splendid example of biographical melodrama which should appall...
...Oliver Peter Heggie, 57, Australian-born character actor of stage (Androcks & the Lion, The Truth About Blayds) and screen (The Letter, The Swan, The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu); of pneumonia; in Hollywood, a few days after completing the role of Dr. MacIntyre in the cinema, The Prisoner of Shark Island...