A hard-headed convict. A domineering warden. And…birds?
Leavenworth convict Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) kills a guard, so warden Harvey Shoemaker (Karl Malden) sticks him in isolation and throws away the key. Years pass. One day, Stroud discovers a lost baby sparrow and begins to care for it. Nurturing the bird mellows Stroud and gives him purpose, and over time, one bird becomes many. Then, when the birds start getting sick, Stroud’s gotta figure out how to save them using science.
His findings on bird diseases bring him fame, but more importantly, they give him dignity. But when Stroud is transferred to Alcatraz, he’s no longer allowed to raise birds.1 Warden Shoemaker delights in this, as he believed Stroud’s bird adventures interfered with his rehabilitation. Stroud argues Shoemaker’s definition of “rehabilitation” is wrong:
Rehabilitation. I wonder if you know what the word means. Do you? The unabridged Webster’s International Dictionary says it comes from the Latin root ‘habilis.’ The definition is: to invest again with dignity. Do you consider that part of your job, Harvey, to give a man back the dignity he once had? Your only interest is in how he behaves.
Eventually, Stroud is transferred off Alcatraz, though he continues to be denied parole.But Stroud’s experiences have taught him to take life in stride. You see it during a prison riot: another prisoner asks Stroud what’s wrong with dying, and Stroud responds “Cuz life’s too precious a gift, that’s why. Because the first duty of life is to live.”
Rating: 8/10, but they don’t once say “WELCOME TO THE ROCK” so it’s kind of trash.
Cast and Crew
Burt! Karl! Two of the most spectacular performers we’ve seen in this column square off in Birdman of Alcatraz. Let’s talk Karl Malden first. We’ve seen his supporting roles in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both Elia Kazan films. Afterwards, Malden got top billing in another Kazan film, Baby Doll (1956).2 He also reunited with Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), a movie we mentioned in our previous wrap-up.
Look, Malden’s not classically handsome like Lancaster or Brando—he’s got a big nose, a puffy face, a big nose, a squat little body, a big nose—but by God he could make magic in the movies. We’ll see Malden again in 1970.
We’ve talked a lot about Burt Lancaster the actor, but let’s discuss Burt the producer. After WWII, Burt was recruited to go to Hollywood by manager Harold Hecht, but he only went under a promise that he’d eventually get to move into production.3 In the meanwhile, Lancaster signed a contract with mega-producer Hal Wallis4, becoming a star actor.
Hecht held up his end of the deal and he and Lancaster formed Norma Productions (later changed to Hecht-Lancaster). That company produced Oscar winner Marty5, though Lancaster went uncredited as a producer. When producer James Hill6 was made an equal partner in the enterprise, the name was changed to Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (H-H-L); that was the banner under which Trapeze (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Separate Tables, and The Unforgiven (1960) were made.
Telly Savalas got a Best Supporting Actor nod for his turn as Feto Gomez, another prisoner who gets into the bird game. Savalas is best known for starring on “Kojak” (1973-1978), where he sucked lollipops and fired off catchphrases like “Who loves ya, baby?” and “Ya can take THAT to da bank!”
Savalas’ other film roles included Pontius Pilate in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Maggot in The Dirty Dozen (1967). He also had a completely unlistenable #1 hit on the U.K. pop charts, which reminds me that something was good and truly wrong with the 1970s.
The Trivia
Birdman of Alcatraz mentions that Stroud found cures for hemorrhagic septicaemia, bird diphtheria, aspergillosis, avian cholera, and fowl paralysis. As such, today’s Trivia section is on…
Wait, what? Oh, we’re not doing a full section on bird diseases? That’s too bad.
Okay, because Robert Stroud was an inmate at both Leavenworth7 and Alcatraz, let’s discuss some U.S. prisons you should know.
We’ll start with United States Penitentiary (USP), Alcatraz Island (off the coast of San Francisco, CA). With a name meaning “pelican,” Alcatraz was originally built as a military installation and housed military prisoners before becoming a federal prison from 1934 to 1963. Alcatraz was the home of Al Capone8, Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis, and Machine Gun Kelly. It was compared to Devil’s Island, the brutal penal colony off the coast of French Guiana, and no one ever escaped, probably.9 As they could have but probably didn’t say: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate.”
An important event in the Red Power movement was the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz by American Indian Movement members. You can read about that here.
Just up the road from Alcatraz is San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, California’s oldest state prison. Its list of former prisoners isn’t as illustrious as Alcatraz, though it held Merle Haggard and Caryl Chessman.10 In this tremendous TikTok [sic], a guy refers to a sandwich as “hittin’ like San Quentin,” which is a phrase you can use if you like. Johnny Cash, who was famed for his prison performances, gave one at San Quentin, but it’s his performance at Folsom State Prison that kicks off the biopic Walk the Line (2005).11
From California pens to New York pens:
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, is called “the castle on the Hudson”; it’s your destination when you’re sent “up the river.” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sent up the river and executed there in 1953.
Attica Correctional Facility: known for the 1971 Attica Prison riot and that part in Dog Day Afternoon where Al Pacino yells its name over and over.
Rikers Island, in Manhattan in the East River. It’s where we wanted to Free Weezy from when Lil Wayne was serving his federal gun charge. Rikers has been a goddamn embarrassment.
But California and New York don’t have all the famous prisons.
Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola: Also called “The Farm,” Angola’s the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S. and called “Alcatraz of the South.” It hosts the Angola Prison Rodeo where, yeah, the prisoners do the rodeo.
Joliet Correctional Center, in Illinois, was a state prison from 1858 to 2002. Some famous alumni: the fictional Blues Brother Jake Blues and the real murderers Leopold & Loeb.
Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), known as Parchman Farm. A book recommendation about Parchman: “Worse than Slavery” by David Oshinsky.
If I didn’t cover your favorite prison, it’s because there’s a whole bunch of ‘em—note that the U.S. has the most prisoners of any country in the world. But don’t get sad about our enormous prison population: per capita, we’re only fifth, under [checks notes] El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. So, uh, little victories.
Odds and Ends
When a doctor is speaking to the warden, he dumbs the terms “hematology” and “histology” down to “blood” and “tissue”…Stroud’s mother mentions she “hasn’t begun to fight,” a line originally said by Navy boy John Paul Jones…the film was based on a biography written by Thomas Gaddis, and a fictionalized version of Gaddis narrates the film…queen of the Best Supporting Actress category Thelma Ritter played Stroud’s mother…1962 was Elmer Bernstein’s avian year: he scored both To Kill a Mockingbird and Birdman of Alcatraz.
Oh, and one last thing: many who knew Robert Stroud, including former inmates and former guards, have said he was a vicious psychopath and that the soulful humanity breathed into him by Burt Lancaster was movie magic myth-making, nothing else.
CORRECTION: In our post on Separate Tables, we mentioned that Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth were in both The Lady from Shanghai, directed by Hayworth’s one-time husband, Orson Welles. Whoops—I juxtaposed two Hayworth films:
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) was directed by and starred Orson Welles—no Glenn Ford. It’s a noir where Hayworth has short blonde hair and it flopped—consider this the movie version of “Felicity” jumping the shark.
The Loves of Carmen (1948) starred Hayworth and Glenn Ford and has this dance scene. It’s based on Prosper Mérimée’s novella “Carmen” (that’s the one adapted into Bizet’s opera) and was directed by Charles Vidor.
KW/OU regrets the error and thanks (who else?) commentor Yogesh for the catch.
Yeah, the Birdman of Alcatraz doesn’t even raise any birds at Alcatraz. As is commonly pointed out, he shoulda been called the Birdman of Leavenworth.
Like A Streetcar Named Desire, Baby Doll was based on a Tennessee Williams play (the play “27 Wagons Full of Cotton”). It’s about a cotton gin owner who seeks revenge on his rival by seducing his childlike wife. Brutal premise. I’m not gonna watch that, though I enjoyed the trailer.
Why produce? More control, better roles, better movies, more money.
Hal Wallis’ films received 19 nominations for the Best Picture Oscar; these films include The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942). (Though he’s not explicitly credited on all these films.)
Marty beat out Hal Wallis’ The Rose Tattoo for Best Picture—one of 18 losses Hal Willis’ films ate in that category.
James Hill was one of Rita Hayworth’s husbands, though we didn’t mention that in the Trivia section we did on her.
Formally, “United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth,” sometimes called “Big Top.” Originally, federal prisoners were held at state prisons, but in 1895, Congress created the federal prison system. This led to the construction of Leavenworth and USP Atlanta (in Georgia), as well as an expansion of McNeil Island (in Washington).
Though Capone also notably did time at Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary and Chicago’s Cook County Jail. Incidentally, the Cook County Jail is the location of much of the musical “Chicago.”
Officially, at least; five prisoners who made it off the island are listed as “missing and presumed drowned.” In The Rock (1996), Sean Connery’s character did escape from Alcatraz, but after a terrorist takeover of the island, he and Nick Cage have to break into the prison to save the day. Neither Cage nor Connery were nominated for Best Actor for that film so we won’t be watching it for this project even though it’s the greatest movie ever made kinda. For completeness, some other Alcatraz movies are Murder in the First (1995) and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
Caryl Chessman wrote the memoir “Cell 2455, Death Row” and was executed in San Quentin in 1960. Fourteen years later and a hundred miles away, Eldridge Cleaver wrote “Soul on Ice” while locked up at Folsom.