The Prisoner of Shark Island

In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln. Mudd is sentenced to life imprisonment and is shipped to Shark Island, a brutal penal colony. Subject to the cruelties of a guard, the doctor suffers the torments of the damned. During a Yellow Fever breakout on Shark Island, Dr. Mudd performs heroically to save the survivors. For his humanitarian efforts, Mudd is finally released and reunited with his wife. While the script glosses over the fact that Dr. Mudd had never been officially pardoned by the US government (the pardon wouldn't be granted until years after this film was made), Prisoner of Shark Island strives long and hard to exonerate the man for whom the phrase \"your name is mud!\" was coined.
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When I come back from making a Western on location, I feel a better man for it. I dont think some of the modern trash makes anyone feel better for having read or seen it.</i><i>
</i>John Ford talking with Bill Libby, 1964