Trailer
Plot summary
Frank Lee Morris, an escape artist and burglar, is sent to Alcatraz, the maximum security prison on an island in San Francisco Bay, in January 1960. In the dining hall he meets Litmus, a man fond of desserts. The warden informs him that nobody has escaped the island and nobody ever will, and does not notice Morris taking a nail clipper from his desk. Morris also meets English and the elderly Doc, who paints portraits. After he beats Wolf, a rapist, in the showers, both men are sent to solitary confinement.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's scene of the inmate Doc cutting off his own fingers with a hatchet was based on a real 1937 incident in which Alcatraz prisoner Rufe Persful, driven to desperation by the prison's strict silence rules, chopped off four fingers hoping to be transferred elsewhere.
- Siegel insisted that it be a Don Siegel film and outmanoeuvred Eastwood by purchasing the rights for $100,000, which created a rift between the two friends; Siegel went to the rival studio Paramount Pictures and never directed an Eastwood picture again.
- Screenwriter Richard Tuggle decided to bypass producers and executives, then called director Don Siegel's agent and lied, saying he had met Siegel at a party and the director wanted to read his script; the agent forwarded it, Siegel liked it and passed it on to Clint Eastwood.
- The film regained cultural attention in 2025 when it aired on PBS just hours before President Donald Trump announced plans to reopen Alcatraz, leading many to suspect the broadcast had inspired his decision.
- Accounts of the real escape differ over who masterminded it. Allen West, the fourth inmate who tried to take part but was left behind when he failed to remove his ventilator grille on the night, is fictionalized in the film as "Charley Butts".
- The film's warden is a fictional character created to avoid potential legal action, and he remains in office over the course of the entire movie; in reality Warden Madigan had been replaced by Blackwell in 1961, a year before the June 1962 escape.
