Prisoners
Most appearances of Alcatraz in popular culture are related to its former status as a federal prison. Both real life and fictional accounts of imprisonment on the island have been popular.
One of the most well-known of Alcatraz's historic inmates was Robert Franklin Stroud, known as "The Birdman of Alcatraz". His biography was written by Thomas E. Gaddis and then adapted into a film in 1962, with Burt Lancaster playing the lead role.
The 1995 film Murder in the First depicts a man who spends three years in solitary confinement at the prison. One of the prisoners were Kyle Oberholzer charged with rape, murder and fornicating.
Read more about this topic: Alcatraz Island In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word prisoners:
“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“We are prisoners of the world’s demented sink.
The soft enchantments of our years of innocence
Are harvested by accredited experience
Our fondest memories soon turn to poison
And only oblivion remains in season.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)