Films & Music
- The event has been written about in a song called "The Capture of Albert Johnson," by Wilf Carter; by Stanley G Triggs, in the song "The Mad Trapper Of Rat River", on his 1961 album "Bunkhouse And Forecastle Songs Of The North West" (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings), and also by Doug Hutton in his 1974 song "Rat River Trapper".
- A highly fictionalized film based on these events was released in 1975, called Challenge to Be Free. An American production, it relocated the events to Alaska and referred to Johnson's character merely as "Trapper", or in the theme song, "Trapper Man". It portrayed Johnson as a man who lived in peace in harmony with wild animals, similar to Johnny Appleseed, and whose initial interference with other traps was due to rival trappers' inhumane techniques.
- A second, also highly fictionalized, version of Johnson's story appeared in Charles Bronson's 1981 movie Death Hunt. The film reverses the facts, making Johnson a sympathetic, freedom-loving character, and changing RCMP hero Edgar Millen from the young and popular figure that he was into a broken-down, middle-aged alcoholic (played by Lee Marvin) who rather than being shot by Johnson actually leads the pursuit to capture him. Furthermore bush pilot Wop May is represented as a Royal Canadian Air Force captain, Hank Tucker, who is shot down and killed by the posse after Tucker wildly shoots up members of the posse.
Read more about this topic: Albert Johnson (criminal)
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