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policy had allowed the media to create their own versions of the Alcatraz regime. That policy, however, remained in force, and the negative perception of the prison held by many newspaper reporters and citizens only worsened.
    Since members of the press were prohibited from receiving any information directly from the staff or inmates, they eagerly sought accounts of life on the island from convicts after they were transferred to other prisons and then released on parole. These former inmates, pleased to have an opportunity to criticize the Bureau of Prisons and Alcatraz, clearly understood that the more sensational they made their accounts, the more attention they would receive. The stories they told of men going mad and suffering under miserable conditions like those on France’s notorious Devil’s Island were reported through the wire services to every part of the country.
    One high-profile Alcatraz ex-convict, Roy Gardner, did more than most to add to the harsh image of the prison. In 1939, after he was released from Alcatraz via Leavenworth, he published a book he had written while on the island entitled
Hellcatraz: The Rock of Despair
. 4 San Francisco Bay Area reporters, residents, and tourists were finally provided with a dramatic, firsthand account of the struggle of the nation’s “public enemies” to survive in a place Gardner called “the tomb of the living dead.” He found other venues from which to tell his stories as well, appearing as an attraction at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939 on nearby Treasure Island, and then working as a guide on a tour boat that circled the island daily.
    By the early 1940s, as a result of the stories written about Alcatraz, the American public had formed in its collective mind a vivid—and highlydistorted—picture of life on the island. This powerful and harsh image lived on through the remainder of the prison’s thirty-year history, fueled by more tell-all accounts from ex-prisoners, speculative journalism, and several real events that appeared to corroborate all the negative claims.
    When the prison closed in 1963, the mythical Alcatraz portrayed by journalists did not fade away. Instead, Hollywood ensured that the Alcatraz myth would acquire more credibility. The tack that film producers and writers took in making movies about Alcatraz was to portray the convicts as heroes (or victims) and the guards and wardens as the villains. This was a time-tested formula for making films about prison inmates, reflecting the view in American culture that even though criminals are usually the “bad guys,” we can also admire them for their individualism, cleverness, and courage.
    In a string of movies made about real and imagined Alcatraz inmates, Hollywood made Alcatraz cons the protagonists—men who stood up to the inhumane conditions and the sadistic guards and wardens. Burt Lancaster played Robert Stroud, the wise, dignified
Birdman of Alcatraz
in the 1962 movie that followed the 1955 book of the same name; Clint Eastwood was Frank Morris, the cool and clever organizer of the famous 1962 escape in the 1979 film
Escape from Alcatraz;
Sean Connery starred as the imaginary former prisoner who saved San Francisco from a missile attack by right-wing fanatics in the 1996 film
The Rock
.
    One of the more recent of the Alcatraz films,
Murder in the First
, is also one of the most inaccurate. Released in 1995, it purports to tell the true story of Henry Young, an Alcatraz prisoner put on trial for the murder of another prisoner. According to the
New York Times
review:
    Murder in the First
is the semi-true story of Henry Young, who in March 1938 was placed in solitary confinement in an underground vault at Alcatraz and remained thus cruelly confined for more than three years. Released into the prison population and suffering the mind-altering effects of his ordeal, he killed a man he thought had wronged him. Was Henry Young responsible for his own actions after suffering