Yuma Territorial Prison - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

(Listed chronologically) The Yuma Territorial Prison figured in:

  • "Three-Ten to Yuma", a 1953 western short story written by Elmore Leonard, and also in two film adaptations:
  • 3:10 to Yuma, the 1957 original. (directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin), and the 2007 remake, also titled 3:10 to Yuma (2007 film), directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
  • 26 Men, the 1957 episode "Incident at Yuma" of the syndicated western series of true stories of the Arizona Rangers, focuses on a prison break and the difficulty of gathering a posse faced by Captain Thomas H. Rynning, portrayed by Tristram Coffin.
  • In the 1959 western, Rawhide (S1E2 broadcast 1 Jan 59), starring Clint Eastwood. In the episode "Incident at Alabaster Plain" Rowdy Yates tells how he and a fellow Confederate Corporal (Buzz Travis) escaped the Yuma Territorial Prison during the Civil War.
  • In the 1961 western, The Comancheros, starring John Wayne, Yuma is also referenced.
  • For a Few Extra Dollars (aka Fort Yuma's Gold) is a 1966 Italian spaghetti western war film.
  • The first scene of the "Louis L'Amour" book Kid Rodelo (first published in 1966) takes place in Yuma Prison
  • In Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), the bandit Cheyenne is put on a train to Yuma (from which he escapes).
  • Yuma prison is referenced frequently in western radio and television programs such as Gunsmoke, The Rifleman and Bonanza, where ex-cons were frequently described as having done time.
  • The 1968 Italian made film "Long Ride From Hell" is a tale of revenge that chronicles the saga of a rancher who along with his brother is unjustly sent to Yuma prison.
  • In The Wild Bunch (1969), Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) threatens Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan): "You've got thirty days to get Pike, or thirty days back to Yuma."
  • The novel Forty Lashes Less One (1972) by Elmore Leonard takes place almost entirely inside Yuma Prison in 1909, shortly before it was closed down.

Read more about this topic:  Yuma Territorial Prison

Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:

    “We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.”
    —Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    “Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
    —Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)