The Prisoner of Shark Island

As Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg on the night he shot Lincoln, title character Warner Baxter is getting railroaded at trial, Douglas Wood his lawyer, Arthur Byron the prosecutor, Robert Dudley and others testifying, a grim turn in John Ford’s The Prisoner Of Shark Island, 1936.

Director John Ford opens with a dramatic staging of an even that, though often forgotten, roughly did happen, Frank McGlynn Sr. in one of several portrayals of President Lincoln, at the White House on the evening of Lee’s surrender, in The Prisoner Of Shark Island, 1936, starring Warner Baxter.

First scene for title character Warner Baxter as Marylander Dr. Samuel Mudd, Gloria Stuart his wife, both unaware that President Lincoln has been shot, and that their guests (Francis McDonald as John Wilkes Booth, Paul Fix his cohort) are culpable, early in John Ford’s The Prisoner Of Shark Island, 1936.