After healing the leg of the murderer John Wilkes Booth, responsible for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, perpetrated on April 14, 1865, during a performance at Ford's Theatre in Washington; Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, considered part of the atrocious conspiracy, is sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to the sinister Shark Island Prison.
The Prisoner of Shark Island is a 1936 American drama film that presents a highly whitewashed and fictionalized life of Maryland physician Samuel Mudd, who treated the injured presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth and later spent time in prison after his unanimous conviction for being one of Booth's accomplices. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, was directed by John Ford and starred Warner Baxter and Gloria Stuart.