Poor bastard. No wonder the real Stroud was mad. If I had been in jail for all my life, I wouldn't be happy either ... Somehow he might have deserved this film since his life must have been very unhappy.
--- Once Upon a Time in the West ---
Keep your loving brother happy! - Frank
Uh, sorry to burst you bubble there, latsblaster, but the real Robert Stroud was not a very nice person. He was a murderer and quite possibly a child molester. While the film is a very good film, it is not very historically acurate. Any punishment Stroud got was what he deserved. His diaries included some very disturbing fantasies about killing and raping young boys. Not something a sane man would write about.
"What are you People?! On Dope?!"
What are you on about LegendoftheWolf ? I think your bubble has well and truly burst.
For your information Robert Stroud aka Birdman of Alcatraz was originally sentenced to 12 years at McNeil Island Penitentiary in 1909 for the revenge murder of 28 year old F.K.Von Dahmer. While there he attacked another inmate and had 6 mths added to his sentence. In 1912 he and several other inmates where moved to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary due to overcrowding.
On March 26, 1916 Stroud killed a sadistic prison guard named Andrew F. Turner who was about to beat him. After 2 invalidated trials Stroud was finally sentenced to death but it was commuted to life on a clemency appeal to President Woodrow Wilson in 1920.
In 1942 Stroud was moved to Alcatraz until he was moved in 1959 a minimum-security prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. where he died in 1963 at the age of 73 after serving 54 years - mostly in solitary confinement.
Stroud wrote several articles for the "Roller Canary Journal" from the 1920's onwards and 4 books while incarcerated, "Diseases of Canaries", published in 1933, "Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds" published in 1942. While in Alcatraz he wrote a book entitled "Looking Outward: A History of the U.S. Prison System from Colonial Times to the Formation of the Bureau of Prisons", and an autobiography entitled "Bobbye".
I know of no diaries he wrote, especially none mentioning the fantasies about killing and raping young boys that you refer to. Nor is there any mention anywhere of "possibly being a child molester".
My uncle knew an old Alcatraz guard, and before he died he said that the birdman was really bad...one of the worst. I think he's probably right...
If you can hear a piano fall you can hear me comin' down the hall...
It's nice to believe in the romanticised tale of a prisoner: Not everyone in prison is/was necessarily a horrible person, but Robert Stroud was not one of them. He was a violent man; although I'm sure the brutal prision system was partially to blame for his failure to reform.
http://members.aol.com/Toonsamples/birdman.html
If you want to know about the real Robert Shroaud, check out
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/stroud/index.html
Yeah, don't bother looking for neutral work about Stroud. Instead, find one site, read it, and then pretend you know everything about his life.
Honestly, people can't think for themselves anymore. Learn to read a multitude of sources when you're researching a subject, or do the research yourself. That one site you provided is largely against Robert Stroud, and attempts to show him as an evil and sadistic murderer.
Brilliant answer! People are too fast to judge, especially in todays fake news world.
sharePlease, this is a guy who was up for parole when he was in his 70's. They asked him, why at his age, he would even want to be paroled. His reply was 'I have a lot of people to kill, and i'm running out of time'. A&E just had a program on about leavenworth, inwhich they talk about the birdman. After this movie came out, a little girl wrote asking for him to be releashed, because he was miss understood. During this same period, he was writing a story inwhich he had sex with little boys, and then murdered them.
I once read a book called On the Rock about Public Enemy Number One Alvin Karpis' life in Alcatraz.
He said that the authorities were right to keep Stroud where he was because he was very dangerous. Stroud used to threaten to kidnap the children of the prison guards, murder them and eat them.
Birdman of Alcatraz is a very good film, but like many films about real people, it doesn't depict the true personality of Robert Stroud.
I met a prsion guard once who knew Stroud. He said that everything Stroud got, punishment-wise, he deserved. Even Bobby Kennedy, as US Attorney General, refused to release him. Fine movie, great performance by Lancaster, but not historically accurate.
shareand nowhere does it say he was a sexual freak! In fact the man was sick all of his adult life with Brights disease and severe kidney pain! I can't imagine anyone in such dire pain writing of sexual fantasies! And if he did, well being in solitary so many years and having his beloved birds taken away, would cause any human to crack. Stroud was a brilliant man, and if he had been released, who knows what he could have contributed to society's well being. Maybe he would have found a cure for cancer.
As far as old prison guards go, they like to tell stories about their lives and the lives they have known, embellishing stories to their benefit to shock their audience.
Diplomacy the art of saying Nice doggie till you can find a rock- Woody Allen
["and nowhere does it say he was a sexual freak!"]
Then you haven't spent much time with a search engine, have you? Reading one website hardly qualifies as "research."
Or don't you think that spending most of your time writing pedophile fantasies about raping, torturing & killing little boys qualifies as a "sexual freak?"
If you look hard enough you can find the actual text of some of his literary efforts, if you can stand reading that filth. You'll want to take a shower afterward.
Ah, yes... the prestigious Internet, where all the best researchers go for properly-sourced information. I'm not interested in reading the stories themselves. But do you have any real references, or just this Internet stuff?
One reason I don't like Bobby.Kennedy.
shareOne of the many reasons I don't like Bobby Kennedy.
shareI would like to know the truth and of course that's not the reason he was in prison. Being in solitary can have strange effect on the brain also.
One thing though... If he was a potential or a real child molester he should be on close watch and considered extremelly dangerous. But they should not have stopped him from working on birds and diseases... or anything that benefits society, if he's worth it. He could have done a lot more I think.
Stroud a child molester?How could he have been,when he was in jail from the age of 19?Homosexual?Well,decades in jail with men and no women would turn anybody.
He was rehabilitated if any man was but the victim of a vindictive system-men like prison Director Bennett,a Shylock who wanted his pound of flesh.That's why he was shipped to Alcatraz-sheer spite.No one should have to serve more than thirty years-it's that simple.And why won't they allow Stroud's book on the penal system to be published?
No one should have to serve more than thirty years?
You're as crazy as Stroud & Manson.
Charlie is eligible for parole now. Why not sign up as his sponsor & roommate?
This movie is amazing and Mr. Lancaster is great in the role...but the thing that I HATE is that they paint a portrait that makes Stroud look like a hero and he was anything else then a hero.
shareI saw that program on Leavenworth, and it's segment on Stroud.
He definitely deserved to be kept locked up. All indications are that he was a dangerous sexual predator. Why didn't authorities realize it back then? My guess is because they really didn't think to look for stuff like that, or have proper tests to determine it.
Without a doubt, Stroud was a highly intelligent man and did accomplish remarkable research on bird diseases. The fact he did the research from the solitary wing at Leavenworth makes it even more remarkable. However, that cannot erase the fact that he was a dangerous sociopath who would surely have re-offended if he'd ever been released.
Burt Lancaster gives a great performance indeed, but it is NOT what the real Stroud was like. The trouble was that nobody connected with the film -including the book's author Tom Gaddis- had ever been able to meet with the real Stroud. Thus, they probably had no idea what he was really like and thought that the script (and the Gaddis book it was based on) were accurate depictions. Lancaster, supposedly, even offered to take Stroud into his own home if he was released and accept responsibility for him.
Most who knew Stroud felt that the film was highly innacurate in its depiction of him -and this is not only former guards, but former convicts as well. One ex-convict thought Stroud was very dangerous and should be kept locked up. He was credited with saying, after the film's release resulted in an outcry for Stroud's parole, that people didn't know who they wanted released. He felt that they wanted Burt Lancaster to be released. And, retired guards are generally honest about how they depict convicts they once guarded. If the person was decent they'll say so. If he wasn't, they'll say that. (Today, retired guards from Alcatraz have become friends with paroled convicts from there. They've reached an age where old grudges lose meaning and they all count themselves as part of a different era that they like to look back on).
Most people DO agree that Stroud's sentence, of life in solitary, was not consitutional. He could be sentenced to life in prison, yes. But life in solitary, was not a legal sentence. (Meaning, that he should have been given the chance, at least, to be a part of the general prison population). In the end, though, I think the best Stroud could have hoped for was what he got -namely, a transfer to the prison farm in Missouri; where he'd still be incarcerated, but would be able to walk on the grounds, etc.
I just got back from a tour of Alcatraz and the seemingly knowledgeable guide said they had to put Stroud in life solitary because he was so adept at mentally manipulating the other inmates. Stroud would, for his own amusement, say one thing to one guy and something else to another, inciting enough violent incidents that Stroud had to be isolated from the general prison population. Not to mention, he could kill guards and inmates as he had done before; he was an extremely volitale sociopath and psychopath at the same time. Quite fascinating, actually, the guide said Stroud could be more closely correlated with the character Hannibal Lecter than the character portrayed by Burt Lancaster. Apparently the powers that were at the time were quite concerned about the constitutionality of the situation, but life in solitary was in lieu of execution; his mother begged President Woodrow Wilson to isolate him instead of executing him for his murders, in spite of the constitution question. Even in isolation he had more perks than most inmates. In fact, when his disease became such that he spent all his time in the hospital ward, he was allowed to indulge in his want of soaking in a hot tub to shave off all his body hair. Anyway, seems Stroud was a seriously messed up dude who had to be kept from people, constitution or no.
"The trouble was that nobody connected with the film -including the book's author Tom Gaddis- had ever been able to meet with the real Stroud. Thus, they probably had no idea what he was really like"
oh and I suppose YOU and everybody else on this board HAS met him and knows exactly what he was like!
Everyone who knew Stroud -- wardens, guards, other inmates -- agreed that he was a real piece of **** who had no business outside of a cell, even with other prisoners.
I know it's hard to reconcile this with the usual leftist "all prisoners are just misunderstood" nonsense. But get over it and live in the real world.
Explain his wonderful traits to the family of the guard he disembowelled with a homemade shank he'd hidden in his pants.
Poor Robert Stroud ??? Give me a break he was the original Tookie Williams - a human waste of protomatter who committed heinous crimes and then said - oops, let me become media savvy and write a book. The system is flawed - the system is flawed.
boo hoo hoo - get real. Both men deserved death, too bad Stroud was allowed to age and pass away.
HELLO ! What about the victims. Whether by murder, rape, or robbing of life savings - these criminals ruin and destroy lives. Geez - go back to Canada, you criminal loving freak.
If you were directing that rather rude and ingorant last comment at me, I'm guessing you didn't notice -or ignored- the fact that I was saying Stroud deserved to be kept locked up, as he was without doubt a dangerous predator. I also said that people tend to mistake Burt Lancaster's portrayal for what Stroud was really like. Even ex-convicts who knew the man said that it wasn't accurate.
I wonder what would happen if Stroud were alive today. I doubt that he'd be kept in the general prison population. He likely would have followed the same pattern of behaviour that got him placed in solitary to begin with. (One thing to remember is that courts don't decide where a convict is placed once they arrive at a prison. That's up to the warden and/or guards.) If he'd kept on bragging about his desire to sodomize children, I suspect he would have been placed in solitary for his own protection, as even the most hardened professional criminals detest pedophiles.
I work at Alcatraz with the National Park Service. We do extensive research and base the information we give to visitors we get from archives I can tell you that Stroud was an all out scumbag murderer.
He wasnt a child molester but when he was at Alcatraz he wrote several stories about young boys with alot of sexual overtones.
But he would threaten to kill the guards , and eat their children.
Any of the surviving guards I have talked to have all said pretty much the same thing. He was NEVER to be trusted and he was pig in all aspects.
His only power was behind bars, he never wanted out of prison because he had more power in prison to feed his ego.
According to the biography of Stroud presented by the history channel, he once told the p[arole board, after being asked why he wanted to be paroled, something like "I have other people I need to kill."
shareThe poster who stated that the real Stroud was a psychopath, yet an intelligent and manipulative one, is probably the most accurate. Someone like that would be adept at being able to manipulate others (like a writer) into coming up with a fiction to present himself in the most positive light.
Frankly, if it is to be believed that the real Robert Stroud was anywhere near Burt Lancaster's compassionate portrayal as a 'victim' in the movie, wouldn't he have been able to eventually get himself released? I would imagine that the real Robert Stroud was closer to Charles Manson than Burt Lancaster. The 'Hannibal Lector' analogy isn't a bad one, either. That aside, the movie is still very good, so long as it is regarded primarily as a work of fiction.
And, FWIW, Stroud's writings on bird diseases are regarded mostly as curiosities and not being very useful. He certainly was not 'the world's foremost authority in his field' as stated in the film. Although, at the time they were published, considering that veterinary medicine for birds wasn't very advanced, they probably weren't quite as bad.
One of my vets specializes in avian medicine (birds), and she told me that Stroud's research was primitive and rather amateurish, but at that time there was almost no real research being done on birds, so it was a "useful" piece of work, though with some real flaws.
She also said that some of the claims in the movie about Stroud's research and cures were "highly imaginative," according to her professors in vet school, and some of "Stroud's Specifics" that he marketed were of no real value but sold well since there was nothing else on the market. Virtually none of them are in current use.
Considering the real liberties they took with truth in the rest of the movie, I find that easy to believe.
Nonetheless, Stroud's accomplishments in prison with only a 3rd grade education are still remarkable, whether he was a disgusting, predatory ***hole or not.
Stroud himself freely admitted that once antibiotics were invented and became commonly used, his own treatments were outdated.
sharehttp://www.coopertoons.com/merryhistory/robertstroud/birdman.html states that he was probably joking when he said "I have other people I need to kill" to the parole board, but obviously making these jokes wouldn't help his case.
shareHe wasn't directing the comment at you. 'Canadian' is a byword among troglodytes for 'possessed of an elightened social policy'. Whereas Americans, endowed with the largest & most repressive penal system in the indutrialized world, are quite on top of things.
share'the_Brav' wrote:
"HELLO ! What about the victims. Whether by murder, rape, or robbing of life savings - these criminals ruin and destroy lives"
Amen to that!
It disgusts me how so many people show so much compassion for criminals and none toward the victims or their families.
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All of this 'Child molestation' and 'sexual perverted fantasy' crap sounds like a lot of hearsay.
Spending 50+ years in a destructive prison system is liable enough to turn anyone into a psycopath anyway.
Morons
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it. - Roger Ebert
Yeah, you told them off, with your mastery of carefully considered facts and citations thereof. And topped it off with a well-projected "Morons." Bravo!
All I'm saying is, walk a mile in someone else's shoes, before you judge.
Limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief: directly proportional to its awesomeness.