Warden Madigan was generally respected by the inmates at Alcatraz. He was the only Warden there who'd actually worked as a guard there and been promoted up. In 1941, he was instrumental in calmly stopping an escape attempt where he and other guards had been taken hostage by cons trying to break out of one of the industrial shops. He saw that they weren't making headway in trying to saw through the bars. He calmly pointed out that the count was due soon and their attempt would be discovered. He pointed out that nobody had been hurt so far, so why don't they just surrender peacefully before someone DID get hurt. They had to admit he was right and gave themselves up. (On his part, Madigan saw to it that none of the other guards worked them over or anything in exchange for their peaceful surrender.) I liked that he distinguished between segregation and solitary. Those terms are often confused.
Two of those cons in the 1941 escape attempt were Joseph Cretzer and Sam Shockey. Both of them later attempted to escape five years later during the Battle of Alcatraz. Cretzer was killed, while Shockley was later sentenced to death in San Quentin's gas chamber.
Thank you for sharing this video. For me, it's just like to travel back in time since I very often visit Alcatraz. Watching how was in the past "alive" and in working condition is just great.
Great old documentary on Alcatraz. I can feel for the old Warden when he say's he misses seeing San francisco. I sure hoped he retired with his wife and they enjoyed their few remaining years enjoying the city of San Francisco. Good to see top newsman Edward R Murrow. My parents told me about him. Edward R Murrow was doing the news when my parents were babies ! This was all before my time. A different world indeed where ladies still wore dresses and hats and men wore suits and hats ..Thanks for the upload.
63 years, its quite amazing to watch, its like a different planet, my mother was 2 years old in 1957, she told me the first time she saw television was in 60 or 61...
Alcatraz Warden Paul Madigan (born- March, 13, 1897 died- December 25, 1974.) He served as Alcatraz warden 1955-1961. Warden Madigan had worked originally as a correctional officer in the 1930's on Alcatraz and he worked himself up to Warden eventually. He was more soft and lenient to the prisoners and was liked better by the prison staff . There is your quick history on this Warden folks. Just to give you more of a background on him. And the guard behind the Warden at 2:40 plays the part of looking side to side if any badguys are escaping ! Haha. Myself, I have seen Alcatraz from the shoreline as a kid when I visited San Francisco, California in the late 1970's. But this was before you could go inside it and go on tour and all. Plus I belong to a Shark Research committee. California has Great White Sharks but interestingly enough the Great Whites do not swim on the Alcatraz side. Their mostly swimming elsewhere in the California waters and you have the more harmless leopard sharks there. Which is lucky for the Alcatraz escapees. LOL. This video should have WAY more views by the way. Thanks for the upload ! 😀
In the early 1970’s I used to read BOOKS about Alcatraz, with very few pictures on how it looked. Now I can do a virtual tour whilst laying in bed. Still, you gotta appreciate this old footage…I’m surprised I did not come across it at some library (as I child I was infatuate) with Alcatraz. Thanks for sharing.
6:18 That man hiding was 41-year old Floyd Wilson, a bank robber and murderer, who slipped away from lineup during the work shift at the dock, and was found 12 hours later on the shoreline, looking for driftwood to make a raft. He became one of the 36 men who attempted to escape from Alcatraz.
the man talking from 18:00 Governor James Michael Curley said he was going to live until he was 125...he was 82 at the time and died less than a year later. crazy
It was fairly common right up to the 1980s. It wasn't just on television. I remember doctors smoking during examinations, sitting in a smoke-filled movie theater, smoking on planes, trains, buses, etc. Public health laws changed all that, however smoking still continued but more behind closed doors.
@@deekaye25 Grocery stores were big ashtrays with stock boys constantly sweeping up butts. I remember seeing ciggy burns on the little counter for check writing. My father worked for American Tobacco for years. I used to travel with him and would hang out at the pool while he was out peddling the many varieties of "coffin nails" AT had. Ahhh, the 60's. Bud, Beach Boys, and butts.
@@deekaye25 I remember smoking on buses and in cinemas. The smoking ban in pubs,clubs etc didn't happen in Britain until the 2000's. My g/f is terrible when we go to the cinema or to see a band, she keeps going out for a smoke.
Hell, many would aspire to live on a small, well supplied island. Other videos ive seen made claims that the food that the inmates were served was better than other institutions, single cells occupied by one, warm showers. Some convicts asked, requested to get a spot in Alcatraz. It wasn't the hell hole that it was made out to be according to some.
Wonderful video. When I listen to people like the Warden, it makes me feel people now are far less competent and dignified. Are we evolving or devolving? It was also interesting to see the Warden’s home. Unfortunately during the Indian takeover in 1970 they vandalized and burned down many buildings including the Warden house.
16:58 Murrow, reportedly 3 packs a day of cigarettes. That's 65 cigarettes a day. It killed him young. He spent about a middle class rent payment a month on them.
@@rickkinki4624 Somehow it doesn't sound that young now. Now, Serling died young. Both of those guys should have treated themselves better. I was watching Twilight Zone last night, and it was about astronauts, but made in 1959. Imagine that. How he knew there would be men in space on the regular, 3 years ahead of time. Such a brilliant man. The brain is so powerful, we can't resist the urge to ice it down when it's not fully employed. Addiction.
@@BrisLS1 Nicotine is (or once was) considered the most addictive of them all. Starving concentration camp and PW camp prisoners in World War II would trade what little food they had for tobacco. Throat cancer victims who had laryngectomies would get rubber tubes and continue to smoke cigarettes through their throat stomae. But note that when this film was made, it was still socially acceptable to smoke in public, and even on live TV. Other famous smoking-related cancer victims include President U.S. Grant, baseball hero Babe Ruth; apocalyptic novelist Ayn Rand; existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre; "quiet Beatle" George Harrison; pioneering television producer Walt Disney; and Hollywood stars Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Boone, Yul Brynner, Gary Cooper, Jim Varney, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, and practically everybody who did voices on "The Flintstones." My own father was a PhD biochemist and a medical school professor, and he smoked two packs a day for nearly fifty years. He did cut way back after the femoral artery graft, though. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822330/#:~:text=Hollywood%20actors%20and%20actresses%20Lucille,producer%20of%20Disney%20films%20had
I actually went in the walk-through tour of Alcatraz in 1983, and I actually got to see the underground 'torture chambers', and stepped into the cell that Clint Eastwood went into called, 'the hole,' in the movie, "Escape from Alcatraz." They let us walk in to the what was 'the shop,' the shower room, and see the ACTUALL little van that was used in the movie that transported Clint from the boats up to the cell house at the beginning of the movie.
It was called "Kinescope" [1]. They filmed the TV screen with a regular movie camera on ordinary motion picture film. That's why old recordings like this are often blurry, flickering, and distorted. Quadruplex videotape [2] came in starting about 1956 and had replaced Kinescope by the 60's, but tape technology didn't become simple, small, and cheap enough for the public until the 70's: Betamax in 1975 and VHS in 1976 [3]. 1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope 2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape 3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape
@@williamwingo4740 Oh my goodness, you just brought back some memories for me! I was born in 1983, and our dad was never one for adopting new technologies. We had a Betamax long after VHS had won the war between the two, so whenever we'd go to a video rental store for a film night, my siblings and I would be wowed at all the VHS options, and then have to ignore them all and choose from the tiny selection on one small shelf of Betamax videos to rent! We used to beg for a VHS player, but they were still relatively expensive, and I don't think we got a VHS player until the Betamax finally broke, and he couldn't replace it, so it was a while before we finally were able to rent the more recent films! My dad's luddite tendencies made me smile when I was older, but man, that was so frustrating as a kid! I remember weaning him from cassette tapes onto CD's, and teaching him how to use a CD player. Then mini disks became a thing for a short while, and he regressed all the way back to records, I think in protest, haha, although vinyl lovers would say that was the right decision!
I piss my pants every time my dad finds a full serve and asks "fill it up with no lead!" They banned tetraethyl here in what 1983-4? Then there was the upstate NY scandal dumping PCBs or something in it to get rid of them right around the Love Canal issue.
Warden Madigan and I both lived on Alcatraz. He lived there for many years, I lived there for 1 night. I tried to get the Birdman's cell in D Block but one of the park rangers had dibs. I recall waking up with a stuffy nose because it was so dusty.
And now we know there was a successful escape.photographic evidence of 2 men in South America in the1970s.with long hair and sideburns. So not a perfect record warden.
It was a perfect record at the time of this 1957 interview and for the warden himself as he left Alcatraz before the great escape. And that Brazilian photographic evidence is flimsy at best; sunglasses, beards, slightly blurry, etc.
Thank you for uploading this
Warden Madigan was generally respected by the inmates at Alcatraz. He was the only Warden there who'd actually worked as a guard there and been promoted up. In 1941, he was instrumental in calmly stopping an escape attempt where he and other guards had been taken hostage by cons trying to break out of one of the industrial shops. He saw that they weren't making headway in trying to saw through the bars. He calmly pointed out that the count was due soon and their attempt would be discovered. He pointed out that nobody had been hurt so far, so why don't they just surrender peacefully before someone DID get hurt. They had to admit he was right and gave themselves up. (On his part, Madigan saw to it that none of the other guards worked them over or anything in exchange for their peaceful surrender.)
I liked that he distinguished between segregation and solitary. Those terms are often confused.
Two of those cons in the 1941 escape attempt were Joseph Cretzer and Sam Shockey. Both of them later attempted to escape five years later during the Battle of Alcatraz. Cretzer was killed, while Shockley was later sentenced to death in San Quentin's gas chamber.
The audio of this film is amazing for being 60+ years old also the quality isn't bad as well!
i like the way it sounds it was unic
Fascinating footage, I'm 63, so I was born the same year this film was done.The Rock- indeed !
I loved how men spoke so professional and addressed each other by name back then. Wish it was still the same.
Have you noticed how juvenile some adult UA-camrs sound these days?
@@PathfinderHistoryTravel That has a lot to do with the fact that they're targeting children as their audience. Like the Paul brothers and their ilk.
Welcome to liberalism.
@jamalsmith5073 political bullshit has nothing to do with it
@@christhayil8354 You must be liberal.
This is amazing...So well put together for 65 years ago great find...
Thank you for sharing this video. For me, it's just like to travel back in time since I very often visit Alcatraz. Watching how was in the past "alive" and in working condition is just great.
Great old documentary on Alcatraz. I can feel for the old Warden when he say's he misses seeing San francisco. I sure hoped he retired with his wife and they enjoyed their few remaining years enjoying the city of San Francisco.
Good to see top newsman Edward R Murrow. My parents told me about him. Edward R Murrow was doing the news when my parents were babies ! This was all before my time. A different world indeed where ladies still wore dresses and hats and men wore suits and hats ..Thanks for the upload.
63 years, its quite amazing to watch, its like a different planet, my mother was 2 years old in 1957, she told me the first time she saw television was in 60 or 61...
Love how the times were so different. Murrow is giving the best interview while smoking a cigarette on live waves
It’s so crazy to see and hear how ppl talked back in those days and the quality of technology very impressive
This is amazing.
You can tell his wife was either readying a script and/or had one memorized. Bless her heart.
Alcatraz Warden Paul Madigan (born- March, 13, 1897 died- December 25, 1974.) He served as Alcatraz warden 1955-1961. Warden Madigan had worked originally as a correctional officer in the 1930's on Alcatraz and he worked himself up to Warden eventually. He was more soft and lenient to the prisoners and was liked better by the prison staff . There is your quick history on this Warden folks. Just to give you more of a background on him. And the guard behind the Warden at 2:40 plays the part of looking side to side if any badguys are escaping ! Haha.
Myself, I have seen Alcatraz from the shoreline as a kid when I visited San Francisco, California in the late 1970's. But this was before you could go inside it and go on tour and all.
Plus I belong to a Shark Research committee. California has Great White Sharks but interestingly enough the Great Whites do not swim on the Alcatraz side. Their mostly swimming elsewhere in the California waters and you have the more harmless leopard sharks there. Which is lucky for the Alcatraz escapees. LOL. This video should have WAY more views by the way. Thanks for the upload ! 😀
In the early 1970’s I used to read BOOKS about Alcatraz, with very few pictures on how it looked. Now I can do a virtual tour whilst laying in bed. Still, you gotta appreciate this old footage…I’m surprised I did not come across it at some library (as I child I was infatuate) with Alcatraz. Thanks for sharing.
You can volunteer on Alcatraz and give tours.
6:18 That man hiding was 41-year old Floyd Wilson, a bank robber and murderer, who slipped away from lineup during the work shift at the dock, and was found 12 hours later on the shoreline, looking for driftwood to make a raft. He became one of the 36 men who attempted to escape from Alcatraz.
the man talking from 18:00 Governor James Michael Curley said he was going to live until he was 125...he was 82 at the time and died less than a year later. crazy
Meanwhile 4 people are planning to perform the Great Escape
Heero Yuy not till 1961, the 3 other weren’t even there till 1960
@@ProGaming-cw1qy ACTUALLY FRANK MORRIS ARRIVED JANUARY 18 1960, DONT KNOW ABOUT THE ANGLINS
@@theanswerisinthebackofyourhead # yes u r really right
No one escaped. Died in the water.
@@jaredwhite489 more than likely the bodies have never been discovered
Long before smoking was bad for you.
Edward R. Murrow died of lung cancer, eight years later. He had just turned 57.
@@richardbemelen7287 True. Smoking has never been good to anybody.
@@bonnybonny8337 I thought it was it kept you skinny
Wow, that guard in the first half is George DeVincenzi. I hope he has seen this footage.
He is still living well into his 90s and he still comes to Alcatraz to share his stories with the visitors.
@CLIFF yes he still is
He certainly is getting full use out of his pension. Like almost half a century! Well earned!
@cliff8606 Yes, he's 98 years old.
Cigarettes so addictive the interviewer couldn’t distinguish and continued smoking during filming.
Anyone else here because they've been to Alcatraz?
I visited Alcatraz about 1988. Tours weren't nearly so well-organized back then.
Spent many nights there sleeping in D-Block.
I swear everyone’s voice was deep in the 50’s and 60’s lmao
maybe because most of them smoked?
They filmed this in 57 my dad was 24 living in Oakland and my mom 22 in San Jose
Wow, a host smoking a cigarette, 'You're in Marlboro country' :-)
It was fairly common right up to the 1980s.
It wasn't just on television. I remember doctors smoking during examinations, sitting in a smoke-filled movie theater, smoking on planes, trains, buses, etc.
Public health laws changed all that, however smoking still continued but more behind closed doors.
Most likely Chesterfields. That insidious brand permeated Hollywood. Many actors promoted their use right up until they died.
@@deekaye25 Grocery stores were big ashtrays with stock boys constantly sweeping up butts. I remember seeing ciggy burns on the little counter for check writing.
My father worked for American Tobacco for years. I used to travel with him and would hang out at the pool while he was out peddling the many varieties of "coffin nails" AT had. Ahhh, the 60's. Bud, Beach Boys, and butts.
@@deekaye25 I remember smoking on buses and in cinemas. The smoking ban in pubs,clubs etc didn't happen in Britain until the 2000's. My g/f is terrible when we go to the cinema or to see a band, she keeps going out for a smoke.
@@godfreecharlie Murrow smoked Camels.
Different breed of man from that time
Hell, many would aspire to live on a small, well supplied island. Other videos ive seen made claims that the food that the inmates were served was better than other institutions, single cells occupied by one, warm showers. Some convicts asked, requested to get a spot in Alcatraz. It wasn't the hell hole that it was made out to be according to some.
If you had money and connections like Al Capone I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.
@@eligreg99 Capone was sent to Alcatraz because his money and connections were worthless there. Alcatraz broke Capone.
The guard behind him wrote a book of his job there
Wonderful video. When I listen to people like the Warden, it makes me feel people now are far less competent and dignified. Are we evolving or devolving? It was also interesting to see the Warden’s home. Unfortunately during the Indian takeover in 1970 they vandalized and burned down many buildings including the Warden house.
16:58 Murrow, reportedly 3 packs a day of cigarettes. That's 65 cigarettes a day. It killed him young. He spent about a middle class rent payment a month on them.
Brian, Hi Rod "Twilight Zone" Serling smoked 4 packs a day and died at 50.
Murrow died at 57.
@@rickkinki4624 Somehow it doesn't sound that young now. Now, Serling died young. Both of those guys should have treated themselves better. I was watching Twilight Zone last night, and it was about astronauts, but made in 1959. Imagine that. How he knew there would be men in space on the regular, 3 years ahead of time. Such a brilliant man. The brain is so powerful, we can't resist the urge to ice it down when it's not fully employed. Addiction.
@@BrisLS1 Nicotine is (or once was) considered the most addictive of them all. Starving concentration camp and PW camp prisoners in World War II would trade what little food they had for tobacco. Throat cancer victims who had laryngectomies would get rubber tubes and continue to smoke cigarettes through their throat stomae.
But note that when this film was made, it was still socially acceptable to smoke in public, and even on live TV.
Other famous smoking-related cancer victims include President U.S. Grant, baseball hero Babe Ruth; apocalyptic novelist Ayn Rand; existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre; "quiet Beatle" George Harrison; pioneering television producer Walt Disney; and Hollywood stars Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Boone, Yul Brynner, Gary Cooper, Jim Varney, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, and practically everybody who did voices on "The Flintstones."
My own father was a PhD biochemist and a medical school professor, and he smoked two packs a day for nearly fifty years. He did cut way back after the femoral artery graft, though.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2822330/#:~:text=Hollywood%20actors%20and%20actresses%20Lucille,producer%20of%20Disney%20films%20had
@@BrisLS1 Serling had heart disease in his family. His father and grandfather also died in their early 50s.
I actually went in the walk-through tour of Alcatraz in 1983, and I actually got to see the underground 'torture chambers', and stepped into the cell that Clint Eastwood went into called, 'the hole,' in the movie, "Escape from Alcatraz." They let us walk in to the what was 'the shop,' the shower room, and see the ACTUALL little van that was used in the movie that transported Clint from the boats up to the cell house at the beginning of the movie.
I wonder how this was recorded for posterity. This predated VCRs by nearly two decades.
Yes. How was it recorded ??
It was called "Kinescope" [1]. They filmed the TV screen with a regular movie camera on ordinary motion picture film. That's why old recordings like this are often blurry, flickering, and distorted.
Quadruplex videotape [2] came in starting about 1956 and had replaced Kinescope by the 60's, but tape technology didn't become simple, small, and cheap enough for the public until the 70's: Betamax in 1975 and VHS in 1976 [3].
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruplex_videotape
3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape
@@williamwingo4740 Outstanding information, thank you!
@@rickkinki4624 You're welcome.
@@williamwingo4740 Oh my goodness, you just brought back some memories for me! I was born in 1983, and our dad was never one for adopting new technologies. We had a Betamax long after VHS had won the war between the two, so whenever we'd go to a video rental store for a film night, my siblings and I would be wowed at all the VHS options, and then have to ignore them all and choose from the tiny selection on one small shelf of Betamax videos to rent! We used to beg for a VHS player, but they were still relatively expensive, and I don't think we got a VHS player until the Betamax finally broke, and he couldn't replace it, so it was a while before we finally were able to rent the more recent films!
My dad's luddite tendencies made me smile when I was older, but man, that was so frustrating as a kid! I remember weaning him from cassette tapes onto CD's, and teaching him how to use a CD player. Then mini disks became a thing for a short while, and he regressed all the way back to records, I think in protest, haha, although vinyl lovers would say that was the right decision!
Single cells,sea view sounds good for me.
Chris, I heard the Alcatraz meals were good too ! But boredom was a big problem I heard so people wrote a lot of letters to family and such.
I piss my pants every time my dad finds a full serve and asks "fill it up with no lead!" They banned tetraethyl here in what 1983-4? Then there was the upstate NY scandal dumping PCBs or something in it to get rid of them right around the Love Canal issue.
Crazy how that man single handedly destroyed my mystery box ruining my day
Having to pay 2000 for it to fix itself
Yeah can't wait to get to Alcatraz so I can get a single cell.
I am some how related to Paul j madigan so it is nice to see what history my family has
Yes cuzzin how u doing we have a big familia we do it for the raza 😂
I met his daughter in 2003.
The days when a tv compere sat there smoking his life away..lol
Sad that their home is now in ruins.
Arson in 1970. Only a shell now.
Ole Edward smoking away.
Gary, Edward Murrow I read smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day and died at 57 in 1965.
I love amaco
Geez these old Commercials
5 years before the famous escape that would lead to the prison’s closure
This is rare information
👍
Warden Madigan and I both lived on Alcatraz. He lived there for many years, I lived there for 1 night. I tried to get the Birdman's cell in D Block but one of the park rangers had dibs. I recall waking up with a stuffy nose because it was so dusty.
I wonder what the warden meant by saying the 3 faith's. was he talking about Judaism Christianity and ??
Protestant, Catholic, Jewish.
And now we know there was a successful escape.photographic evidence of 2 men in South America in the1970s.with long hair and sideburns. So not a perfect record warden.
It was a perfect record at the time of this 1957 interview and for the warden himself as he left Alcatraz before the great escape.
And that Brazilian photographic evidence is flimsy at best; sunglasses, beards, slightly blurry, etc.
No proof it was the Anglins in the photo. The escape is still unsolved.