William Henry Pratt, known professionally as Boris Karloff and occasionally billed as Karloff the Uncanny, was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film Frankenstein (1931) established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932), and voiced the Grinch in, as well as narrating, the animated television special of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), which won him a Grammy Award.
Condemned is a 1929 American pre-Code melodrama, directed by Wesley Ruggles, and starring Ronald Colman, Ann Harding, Dudley Digges, Louis Wolheim, William Elmer, and Wilhelm von Brincken. The movie was adapted by Sidney Howard from the novel by Blair Niles.
A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer to a correctional facility located in a remote location, it is more commonly used to refer to communities of prisoners overseen by wardens or governors having absolute authority.
The penal colony of Cayenne, commonly known as Devil's Island, was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and officially closed in 1953, in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana.
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convicts, especially those recently released from prison, is "ex-con" ("ex-convict"). Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences tend not to be described as "convicts".
Penal transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.
Henri Charrière was a French writer, convicted of murder in 1931 by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana. While Charrière claimed that Papillon was largely true, modern researchers believe that much of the book’s material came from other inmates, rather than Charrière himself. Charrière denied committing the murder, although he freely admitted to having committed various other petty crimes prior to his incarceration.
Devils Island, Devil's Island, or Devil Island may refer to:
Papillon is a novel written by Henri Charrière, first published in France on 30 April 1969. Papillon is Charrière's nickname. The novel details Papillon's purported incarceration and subsequent escape from the French penal colony of French Guiana, and covers a 14-year period between 1931 and 1945.
Jules René Lucien Belbenoît was a French prisoner on Devil's Island who successfully escaped to the United States. He later published the memoirs, Dry Guillotine (1938) and Hell on Trial (1940), about his exploits.
James Albert Stephenson was a British stage and film actor. He took up film acting at 49 and after a typically slow start delivered an Academy Award-nominated performance in the William Wyler-directed melodrama, The Letter in 1940. The roles offered to Stephenson dramatically improved following this performance, but he died just a year later at 52.
Devil's Island is the smallest of the Salvation Islands, an island group in the Atlantic Ocean. It is located approximately 14 km (9 mi) off the coast of French Guiana in South America just north of the town of Kourou. It has an area of 14 ha (34.6 acres). The island was a part of a controversial French penal colony located in French Guiana for 101 years, from 1852 to 1953. Although it was the smallest part of the penal colony, it is notorious for being used for internal exile of French political prisoners during that period. The most famous political prisoner on Devil's Island was Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.
Passage to Marseille, also known as Message to Marseille, is a 1944 American war film made by Warner Brothers, directed by Michael Curtiz. The screenplay was by Casey Robinson and Jack Moffitt from the novel Sans Patrie by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The music score was by Max Steiner and the cinematography was by James Wong Howe.
The French penal colony on Devil's Island was in operation from 1852 to 1946. Large numbers of mostly Hollywood films sere either set on the island or featured characters both real and fictional who had escaped from it. The French Government took a dim view of these films and banned several of them.
Anarchism in French Guiana has a short, and little recorded, history. The only continental territory in Latin America to remain under European control into the 21st century, Guiana has not seen the same political developments as most countries in the region. Still, anarchism has existed to some degree, mainly through the presence of political prisoners deported to the colony. In the modern era, anarchism has had a minor presence in the Guianan political milieu.
Papillon is a 2017 drama film directed by Michael Noer and also the last film by Red Granite Pictures. It tells the story of French convict Henri Charrière, nicknamed Papillon ("butterfly"), who was falsely imprisoned in 1933 in the notorious Devil's Island penal colony and escaped in 1941 with the help of another convict, counterfeiter Louis Dega. The film's screenplay is based on Charrière's autobiographies Papillon and Banco, as well as the former's 1973 film adaptation, which was written by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. and starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
A prison island is an island housing a prison. Islands have often been used as sites of prisons throughout history due to their natural isolation preventing escape.
The penal colony of New Caledonia was a penitentiary establishment which was in operation from 1864 to 1924. Many French prisoners from mainland France were deported there.
George John Seaton, was an English man who was sentenced to French Guiana as a prisoner. He was housed on Devil's Island which is notoriously one of the worst penal colonies of its time. Seaton was one of the last prisoners to escape the island before it was officially closed. After escaping his imprisonment, Seaton went on to be a slave on French Guiana.
