The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) on Netflix
Approved19361h 36mBiographyDramaHistory
Dr. Samuel Mudd splints a stranger's broken leg hours after Abraham Lincoln is shot. He does not know the man is Lincoln's assassin, and is sentenced to life on Shark Island.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/102,879 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Samuel Mudd is a physician in Maryland with his wife, Peggy. In the hours after President Abraham Lincoln is shot, a man with a broken leg comes to the Mudd home, and Mudd splints it and takes a banknote in return. He does not know his patient is John Wilkes Booth, nor that the president has been killed; he learns of the assassination afterward, and only then notices the bill is fifty dollars. Arrested as an accessory to the assassination, Mudd is tried and unanimously convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is shipped to Arcadia, the prison on the Dry Tortugas, where the commandant and his guards hold him.
Cast
- Joyce Kayas Martha Mudd
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century's vice-president in charge of production, got the idea to make The Prisoner of Shark Island after reading a Time magazine article about the prison camp for political prisoners on the Dry Tortugas island.
