the leading man is my tpye

People are voting emotionally.

Let's be realistic.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

On 09 April 1865, John Wilkes Booth (Francis McDonald) breaks his leg after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.). He flees with an accomplice and once in Maryland, they seek medical treatment with the country Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd (Warner Baxter) that does not know that his patient has murdered the president. Dr. Mudd is arrested by the army for helping John Wilkes Booth and together with seven other suspects, they are sent to a military court without civil rights. Dr. Mudd is a scapegoat and sentenced to life imprisonment in the hopeless prison in the Dry Tortugas, in Gulf of Mexico. When the prison is isolated due to a yellow fever epidemic, Dr. Mudd helps the guards and the other prisoners to cure the disease. "The Prisoner of Shark Island" is a great biographical drama by John Ford, telling a tale of injustice and recognition of a nation with a family man that is sentenced to a life sentence in a devil's island of the Nineteenth Century in Gulf of Mexico. The story is engaging and supported by magnificent performances and direction. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Prisioneiro da Ilha dos Tubarões" ("The Prisoner of Shark Island")

Abraham Lincoln's assassination is the basis of this interesting film that tries to do justice to a Southern doctor that is accused of abetting the man that killed the President. The story begins in 1865 as the Civil War ended. Abraham Lincoln, one of the most beloved, and hated men in the new republic, appears in the White House balcony to address the troops. He makes a surprise announcement when he asks the band to play "Dixie", something that was meant to be a conciliatory gesture. Lincoln's murder by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford theater, brings Dr. Samuel A. Mudd into the investigation.Dr. Mudd, a Southern doctor, happens to be at home when the fleeing assassin needs the services of a physician to treat his broken leg, the result of having jumped to the stage after killing Mr. Lincoln. The doctor and his wife are dumbfounded when the companion of Booth gives him a fifty dollar bill for a two dollars job. They are quite taken aback, but it is too late to return the money since the men had gone away. The boot that was ripped from Booth surfaces during an investigation being conducted that follows the trail followed Wilkes took to escape the police.Because of the circumstantial evidence, Dr. Mudd is taken prisoner. The trial that ensues condemns the doctor to life in prison, something the real conspirators did not get. His sentence is to be served in the prison at Fort Jefferson, in the Dry Tortugas, off the Florida coast. The jailed Dr. Mudd finds an avowed enemy in the cruel Sgt. Rankin, who vows to make his life miserable. The onset of yellow fever changes things for Dr. Mudd. He is called to assist the sick men. The story ends in a good note as Washington pardons him for his role in containing the outbreak.John Ford joined forces with Nunnally Johnson in a film that, as seen today, still holds the viewer's attention after more than seventy years of having been made. Mr. Ford, perhaps the best director in the history of American cinema, shows why he was a man that understood what the movie going audiences wanted. He treated the material with reverence, as he focuses his attention on a man that for all accounts had nothing to do with the assassination of a US president.Warner Baxter, playing Dr. Mudd, brought a raw intensity to the way his character needed to show. Mr. Baxter had a great role in the falsely accused doctor, as he showed in the film. Gloria Stewart is seen as Mrs. Mudd, a valiant woman who believed in her man's innocence and stuck to her principles. John Carradine made an excellent Sgt. Rankin. Ernest Whitman, Francis McDonald, Fred Kohler, and O.P. Heggie, are featured in the large cast.

This moving story does have some actuality. One of the interesting details is some legal argument about the place of residence of doctor Mudd. The lawyers argue that if he could be transported from Shark Island, the prison on Dry Tortugas, to a place where normal US legislation is applied, then a writ of habeas corpus could be served and he would go free. Therefore Mudd's supporters launch a failed rescue attempt to that effect. On Dry Tortugas, an island off the Floridy Keys, the prisoner has no chance to appeal for territorial reasons. In my understanding (I am no lawyer, however) this pretty much reflects the Guantanamo situation of today and one just hopes that no doctor Mudds are holed up there and that all open legal questions in that context can be resolved satisfactorily.I am always amazed how outspoken movies of the great Hollywood Studios could be on political issues or social or legal injustice. This movie is an important product of this tradition. The Prisoner of Shark Island is almost an Anti Yankee-movie. The soldiers are uncouth and brutal, the carpet baggers sleazy double talkers. The authorities panic after President Lincoln's assassination. Somebody, anybody has to hang for the crime. And fast. One of the memorable moments of the movie has one of the military judges in charge say something like „we owe it to the people", clearly meaning the enraged mob in the square below. Thinking of who else claimed to fulfill the wishes of „the people" around 1936 this could also be an appeal to legal authorities to serve the written law and not give in to those who shout the loudest.Director John Ford certainly knew how to stir up emotions, some of the pathos might be regarded as slightly overwrought by contemporary viewers. However, The Prisoner of Shark Island certainly is one of the most beautiful and memorable movies of his.

THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (20th Century-Fox, 1936), subtitled "Based on the Life of Samuel A. Mudd," directed by John Ford with screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, brings forth an obscure fact-based story about one country doctor whose name has become unjustly associated with conspiracy and treason. The preface that precedes the story gives the indication as to what the movie represents ... FORWARD: "The years have at last removed the shadow of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd of Maryland, and the nation which once condemned him now acknowledges the injustice it visited upon one of the most unselfish and courageous men in American history," George L. Radcliffe, United States Senator of Maryland. THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND recaptures the tragic event in American history forgotten through the passage of time. Aside from the fact that this could very well be a sequel to D.W. Griffith's biographical depiction of ABRAHAM LINCOLN (United Artists, 1930), with its concluding minutes depicting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Walter Huston) seated along side his wife, Mary (Kay Hammond), by John Wilkes Booth (Ian Keith), while watching a play, "Our American Cousin," at Ford's Theater. What happens after-wards is never really disclosed, until the release of THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND six years later. The Civil War has ended. Soldiers are seen parading home, accompanied by a marching band. Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.) comes out on his upstairs balcony, and not quite up to making a speech, asks the band to simply play "Dixie." The reconstruction of Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater soon follows, with Lincoln, becoming the fatal victim of a bullet aimed at his head shot from the gun belonging to John Wilkes Booth (Francis J. McDonald). Injuring his leg after jumping onto the stage, Booth, accompanied by David E. Herold (Paul Fix), make their escape from the theater riding on horseback into the rainy night bound for Virginia. Unable to stand the pain of his leg much longer, the two fugitives from justice locate the home of a country doctor named Samuel Alexander Mudd (Warner Baxter), a happily married man with a beautiful wife, Peggy (Gloria Stuart), daughter, Martha (Joyce Kay), and his live-in father-in-law, the outspoken Colonel "Turkey" Dyer (Claude Gillingwater Sr.). Unaware of who this injured man is, true to his profession, Mudd attends to the fracture of this stranger's leg before moving on. The next morning, officers trace Booth's whereabouts towards Mudd's property, and when one of them finds a cut up boot with Booth's name nearly smeared off, Mudd, is taken away from his family, put to trial and charged with being part of the conspiracy to Lincoln's murder along with seven others, including the captured David Herold. (Wilkes fate is described through inter-titles as being killed while resisting arrest in Virginia, leaving eight strangely assorted people, guilty as well as the innocent, to face trial and an angry mob). In spite of his pleas, Mudd, is sentenced serve life of hard labor at Dry Tortugas, a prison located on the Gulf of Mexico along the Florida Keys surrounded by man-eating sharks, better known as "Shark Island." Once there, Mudd finds his name associated with conspiracy and treason, and must cope with Sergeant Rankin (John Carradine), an evil jailer and Lincoln sympathizer, who, once learning of Mudd's identity, pleasures himself in abusing the doctor with punches to his jaw and forceful shoves every chance he gets.Other actors featured in this historical drama include Harry Carey as the Commandant; Francis Ford as Corporal O'Toole; Fred Kohler Jr. as Sergeant Cooper; along with O.P. Heggie (1879-1936) as the prison physician, Doctor McIntire, and Arthur Byron (1872-1943) as Secretary of War Erickson, each making their final screen appearances. Child actress Joyce Kay as Martha Mudd looks somewhat like a pint-size Shirley Temple, with curls and all. Extremely cute, her movie career became relatively short-lived.Whether the story about inhuman injustice to an innocent doctor is historically accurate or not really doesn't matter, for that John Ford's direction recaptures the essence to the post Civil War era, along with brutal hardships of prison life depicted on screen as America's Devil's Island. Warner Baxter, gives one of his best dramatic performances of his career of the doctor condemned for following the ethics of his trade. The yellow fever sequence where Mudd, who has contacted yellow fever himself, shows his true dedication by working continuously in heat and rain, and making all efforts possible to save those hundreds of near death prisoners. Even more dedicated is his wife, Peggy, wonderfully played by Gloria Stuart, who, like her husband, stops at nothing either, in this case, trying to prove her husband's innocence in countless efforts in getting Sam a new trial. Right from the start, viewers are very much aware of Mudd's innocence, and as with many noted historical figures who have faced similar situations, he finds himself punished along with the guilty, with the indication that everything happens for a reason. One man's fate (Lincoln) becomes another man's (Mudd) destiny.As with the biographical sense of Samuel A. Mudd, the film version to THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND is unjustly forgotten. Out of circulation on the commercial television markets since the late 1970s or beyond, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND frequently aired on the American Movie Classics cable channel until 1993, and brought back one last time in August 1999 as part of AMC's annual film preservation and tribute to director John Ford. In later years THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND has played on the Fox Movie Channel as well as Turner Classic Movies where it premiered December 10, 2007. Of great interest to American history buffs, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, is the sort of Hollywood-style history lesson director John Ford does best. (***)