The Prisoner of Shark Island is a 1936 American biographical drama directed by John Ford, built on a documented legal case from the months after the American Civil War. It runs ninety-six minutes and sits in the historical corner of the studio era's true-story filmmaking.
What is The Prisoner of Shark Island about?
Its subject is Dr. Samuel Mudd, a physician working in the rural United States in 1865. Late one night a stranger arrives at his door with a broken leg, and he does what a doctor does: sets the bone and sends the man on his way by morning. Only afterwards does the patient's identity become public, and with it the fact that the injured man had shot President Lincoln days earlier. In the nationwide investigation that follows, Mudd's name is drawn in beside the conspirators; he is tried and sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress on a remote island. The rest of the film stays with what that sentence costs him.
About the cast
Warner Baxter leads the cast, with Gloria Stuart, Claude Gillingwater, Arthur Byron, O. P. Heggie, Harry Carey, Francis Ford and John McGuire also credited. The catalogue lists the ensemble without mapping performers to particular characters, and this page keeps to that order rather than guessing. All of them belonged to the working American screen of the 1930s.
Context & significance
The events behind the story belong to the closing weeks of the American Civil War and the search that followed the killing of President Lincoln in 1865. K-Time files the title under biography, drama and historical, and all three labels fit: the frame is a real court case, the mode is courtroom and prison drama, and the setting is a documented moment of nineteenth-century United States history. No prior reading is required, and the account stays with one man's case rather than surveying the war.
Watching The Prisoner of Shark Island on Ktime
The Prisoner of Shark Island streams on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so a household can watch it fully in Farsi or keep the original English audio with Farsi text on screen. Reading this page needs no login; playback needs a K-Time account. One sign-in carries your profile, resume point and language preference across TV, phone, tablet and the Farsi web player.