Movie romanticism — a rare laugh for inmates of Alcatraz?

Press, 6 February 1986, Page 15

Movie romanticism — a rare laugh for inmates of Alcatraz?

“Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story” the last of the summer mini-series, begins a repeat screening on Two this evening. KEN FRASER recently visited the now derelict prison, designed to house the United States’ hardest-to-handle convicts. He found that some public conceptions of “The Rock” are merely Hollywood myths. movie.

A myth invented by Hollywood is still carried in the minds of many sightseers who take the ferry out to a 12-acre rock island in the middle of the world’s largest natural harbour.

Alcatraz to them, in spite of the penetrating chill seeping through the brick walls and from the ghosts of the desperate prisoners, holds romanticism inspired by the movie, “Birdman of Alcatraz.”

Robert Stroud, a killer, accumulated almost 300 birds in a Kansan prison, Leavenworth, but certainly was not allowed even the privilege of one feathered friend in the rigid and multitudinous regulations of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. While on “The Rock,” however, he did spend much time copying technical books; his works, “Diseases of Canaries” and “Stroud’s Digest on Diseases of Birds” provided aids to poultrymen and bird breeders — but a distant squawk from the bird nurturing on Alcatraz as depicted in the movie. He had been in jail for 33 years before a transfer to Alcatraz in 1942 to begin penal isolation with his record of perverse behaviour and homo-sexual-homicidal assaults. It started in'l9o9 when as a pimp in Juneau, Alaska, he shot to death and robbed a bartender who had welched on a transaction for one of Stroud’s girls; seven years later he stabbed a guard to death at Leavenworth in front of 1200 inmates.

Sentenced to death by hanging in 1920 after three lengthy trials he had the verdict commuted to life imprisonment as a result of lobbying by his mother and appeals to Mrs Woodrow Wilson, the wife of the President. Stroud then developed his interest in birds at Leavenworth. He ran a breeding business and was

given two adjoining cells to accommodate the birds. One theory was that Stroud developed his interest because he would be given alcohol for his bird experiments. Leavenworth guards raided his cells and found 3i/ 2 gallons of 180-proof mash, a still made out of an old hot-plate, pipe and rubber tubing, light bulbs converted into flasks, and a stiletto-like dagger. They also found that Stroud had been smuggling letters out of prison in the bottoms of bird cages. In 1963, the United States Attorney-General, Robert F. Kennedy, had to determine whether the

dying Stroud should be released from Alcatraz for his final days; Kennedy decided that Stroud, who had been in prison for more than 50 years, was already home. That same year Kennedy also closed Alcatraz.

Guides on this often fogged island are quick to rubbish any thoughts that Stroud had any feathered company there; his cell situation plus the general set-up and inhumane rules confirm it. Inmates would have enjoyed some rare mirth, perhaps, had they known what was to come out of Hollywood. “A good story, but a load of baloney,” was how one guide described the

But the guides are quick to praise another well-known movie about the prison, “Escape from Alcatraz,” as- being thoroughly authentic. Starring Clint Eastwood it followed the clever planning of Frank Lee Morris in 1962, resulting in what is considered to be the only possible successful escape from the prison, although the absolute conclusion is unknown. Morris and two brothers, Clarence and John Anglin, went over the 4.5 metre perimeter wall on July 11 and nobody has heard of them since, save a small pouch with some photographs, linked to Clarence Anglin, found floating near the Golden Gate Bridge. The trio had spent months chipping away with kitchen utensils at the tool-proof bars at the rear of their cells to get into ventilator shafts that led to the roof from where they shimmied down to the ground. They had used cardboard painted with their artwork issue for covers over the holes in their cells and built a work area recessed above their cells to make life preservers from stolen raincoats for' the cold swim to the city shore.

Also fashioned were head replicas of themselves from soap, concrete powder, barber shop clippings, and colour from their art kits. Guards repeatedly fell for the dummy-heads ruse during their routine counts of the sleeping bodies in bunks.

Nine inmates are said to have been included in the original plan, one of

whom is supposed to have had stage fright on the night itself because of a paranoia about white pointer sharks; he mistakenly believed they existed in the bay.

The chill and violent tides of the bay, along with some bloodied attempts, were the downfall of earlier would-be escapers, including a threeday siege in 1946 when thwarted escapers released the other inmates and held the building. Two officers and three prisoners died while 17 guards and one prisoner were wounded. The Marines were called in and back-up guards were sent from other prisons. Two convicts were executed for their part in the escape attempt.

Two men who had tried numerous escapes from previous incarcerations, Ralph Roe and Theodore Cole, come closest to the “possible escape” in 1962 of Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers. In December of 1937 they sawed through the machine shop window bars and used a wrench to break through a perimeter fence gate; the gate then became a ladder to a bay ledge. Still unaccounted for, Cole and Roe were believed by officials to have perished on the chilly tide pulling out to the pcean. Tide conditions were the same on the night, 25 years later, of the Morris party. Today, Alcatraz, the island, remains, a round-ing-off excursion for visitors to San Francisco, to view an institution which held many of America’s most dangerous criminals during a comparatively brief period of 30 years. Only about 300 prisoners were housed at a time in three blocks with gun galleries running

the height of the interior of the enclosing shell. Electric doors were installed and cells also had tool-proof bars. Metal detection devices were at building entrances. The best guards and officers in the penal system were selected for this federal penitentiary in California to isolate the nation’s agitators and influential criminals into one institution.

Amidst severely limited privileges, inmates were allowed visitors after three months residence — and then only family, limited to two people each monthly visit. No parole officers were appointed and there were no regular parole board meetings; inmates could only obtain attorneys through application to the Attorney-General. Prisoners came to Alcatraz from other prisons and not through direction from the courts.

While a library was provided, no newspapers, magazines, radios, or other forms of entertainment were allowed.

No original letters were to be delivered to inmates — only typewritten copies after screening. Rebellious prisoners were broken down by isolation, removal of clothing in cold clammy cells, darkness behind closed doors, and corporal punishment. One warden got around a federal regulation requirement of an electric lamp for every cell by holding that there was no provision for electricity connection to it. A saving feature for the prisoners was the food. An excellent kitchen was maintained even during the Second World War rationing.

Alcatraz was originally the site of the first lighthouse on the west coast and later became an

army fortress, then a stockade, before being set up as a civilian prison to accommodate the notorious from the crime wave of the Prohibition Era. In 1934 it was decided that the inmates of all federal prisons would select inmates for transfer to Alcatraz. The guidelines were to send the most troublesome, gang leaders, escape artists, and those with long or violent records.

They were transported in a door-to-door train service.

Al Capone and 52 other prisoners from Atlanta boarded a train just outside the prison walls to follow a special route under strick security. Finally on the San Francisco Bay shore the train carriages were loaded on to a barge and brought to the Alcatraz docks.

Capone, suffering from syphilis degeneration, started to fail badly several years later and was released for hospital treatment before dying on his Miami family estate in 1947.

The inhospital bay waters defeated escapers over the years and their saltiness lent to the closure of the prison. The concrete proved very porous and deteriorated from the salty air while San Franciscans were protesting about the continued emptying of Alcatraz sewage into the bay. Taking into account the rebuilding ahead and the expense of the facility, Robert Kennedy announced the closure in 1963 amid also a national movement from retribution to prisoner rehabilitation.

The last prisoner, Frank Watherman, left in legirons, and is quoted as saying: “Alcatraz never was no good for anybody.”