This agreeable TV movie concerns on Samuel Mudd and wife well interpreted by Dennis Weaver and Susan Sullivan . Mudd is a Mariland physician implicated for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth , then he is accused assassination Abraham Lincoln and prisoned in Fort Jefferson placed 70 miles West of Key West, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The story is under point of view that Samuel Mudd was innocent of any conspiracy. Evocative cinematography by Figueroa and atmospheric musical score by Gerald Fried, Stanley Kubrik's usual composer . Rightly produced and well written by Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz , future creators of ¨Baywatch¨ series. The picture is professionally directed by Paul Wendkos, a craftsman who directed several TV episodes and movies as ¨Untouchables, The Rifleman, Bif Valley and Invaders¨ and several others. It's a remake from classic film titled ¨The prisoner of Shark Island¨ based on a script by Nunnally Johnson and directed by John Ford with Warner Baxter as Mudd and Gloria Stuart as his spouse.
This film is based on real events , it deals about the tribulations of Doctor Samuel Mudd (Dennis Weaver) and his wife (Susan Sullivan). The deeds are the following : A few short hours after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln , Mudd (1823-1883) gives treatment to a wounded man who shows up at his door. He does not know that the President has been killed assassinated and the man he's healing is John Wilkes Booth . He's arrested for being a accomplice in the assassination and on 1865 President Andrew Johnson and his Secretary of State (Richard Dysart) ordered the formation of a nine-man military commission to judge the conspirators. Mudd was represented by General Thomas Ewing Jr (Arthur Hill) . The prosecution contended that he had been a member of a Confederate communications distribution agency and had sheltered confederate on his plantation. Mudd escaped the death penalty by one vote and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Four of the defendants were hanged at the old Penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal on July 7, 1865. He is sent to prison in the dry Tortugas islands , referred in the movie as Devil's island. After a period of ill treatment due his notoriety, his skills as doctor are requested by the Commandant of the prison . The island has been in the grip of a yellow fever epidemic and officer physician has dead. Samuel Mudd as good medic persuaded to treat patient despite any personal or political disagreement , or even potential legal repercussions. He takes charge injured person and the yellow epidemic subsides. In the ending he receives pardon and is allowed to return freedom. On 1869 , Mudd was pardoned by President Johnson and returned home. Mudd's grandson Richard Mudd tried unsuccessfully to clear the name from stigma of conspiring with James Wilkes Booth. He petitioned several successive Presidents , receiving replies from President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
