I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a 1932 American pre-Code crime tragedy film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Paul Muni as a convicted man on a chain gang who escapes to Chicago. It was released on November 10, 1932. The film received critical acclaim and was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Muni.
Preston Stratton Foster, was an American actor of stage, film, radio, and television, whose career spanned nearly four decades. He also had a career as a vocalist.
John Beach Litel was an American film and television actor.
Palisades Township was a township that existed in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. The township was in existence from 1871 to 1922.
Robert Elliott Burns was an American World War I veteran known for escaping from a Georgia chain gang and publishing the memoir, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!, exposing the cruelty and injustice of the chain gang system. His memoir and story was adapted into the similarly titled 1932 Oscar-nominated film I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which received nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor for star Paul Muni.
American prison literature is literature written by Americans who are incarcerated. It is a distinct literary phenomenon that is increasingly studied as such by academics.
Eddy Chandler was an American actor who appeared, mostly uncredited, in more than 350 films. Three of these films won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and Gone with the Wind (1939). Chandler was born in the small Iowa city of Wilton Junction and died in Los Angeles. He served in World War I.
James William Flavin Jr. was an American character actor whose stage, film, and television career lasted some forty years.
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a Scottish poet.
The era of American film production from the early sound era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 is denoted as Pre-Code Hollywood. The era contained violence and crime in pictures which would not be seen again until decades later. Although the Hays office had specifically recommended removing profanity, the drug trade, and prostitution from pictures, it had never officially recommended against depictions of violence in any form in the 1920s. State censor boards, however, created their own guidelines, and New York in particular developed a list of violent material which had to be removed for a picture to be shown in the state. Two main types of crime films were released during the period: the gangster picture and the prison film.
Vincent Godfrey Burns was Poet Laureate of Maryland, from 1962 until 1979.
James Harlee Bell was an American film and stage actor who appeared in about 150 films and television shows through 1964.
Alan Edwin Baxter was an American film and television actor.
Scott Allen Nollen is an American author known for writing about the history of film, music, literature and African American studies. He was born on April 2, 1963, in Harlan, Iowa. His father, Harold N. Nollen, served in the United States Coast Guard prior to running a successful petroleum distribution business, to which his mother, Shirley A. (Stoltz) Nollen, also contributed. Nollen was educated at the University of Iowa (1984-1989), where he received Bachelor's Degrees in Broadcasting and Film and Honors History, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Master's Degree in U.S., Modern European and African-American History. From 1991 to 2001, he served as an archivist and historian for the National Archives and Records Administration.
Edward Keane was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1921 and 1955.
John Hugh Elliott was an American actor who appeared on Broadway and in over 300 films during his career. He worked sporadically during the silent film era, but with the advent of sound his career took off, where he worked constantly for 25 years, finding a particular niche in "B" westerns.
The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains is a 1987 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, written by Michael Campus, and is based on the true story I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! by Robert Elliott Burns. The film stars Val Kilmer, Charles Durning, Sônia Braga, Kyra Sedgwick, James Keach, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Clancy Brown. The film premiered on HBO on October 31, 1987.
Howard J. Green was an American screenwriter who worked in film and television. He was the first president of the Screen Writers Guild and a founder of the subsequent Writers Guild of America, West.
