Shooting for the film began in 1994. During the thirteen-week shooting schedule, the production team for Murder in the Firstspent more than two weeks on Alcatraz to complete the interior and exterior shots. The logistics of filming on location at Alcatraz also proved challenging for Rocco and his crew. The whole company had to be brought over on boats and barges and the actors’ dressing rooms were the actual hospital ward cells once occupied by inmates. Using photographs from the penitentiary era as a reference, crews repainted sections of the cellblock to resemble its original state. The cinematographer’s visual plan was to create a design in which images would emerge from a stark and desolate landscape. The Alcatraz dungeons were re-constructed for the film on soundstages in Los Angeles, as were the courtroom sets.
Filming around the public tours that were regularly scheduled on the island also proved challenging to the filmmakers. Sometimes they were forced to film scenes with hundreds of onlookers attempting to get a glimpse of the actors, and often interfering in the shots. The film presented the island prison of Alcatraz itself as one of the main characters in the drama. Despite its inaccurate portrayals and its lack of historical verisimilitude, the film still managed to capture some of the imagery and essence of Alcatraz. The film turned Henri Young into both a societal legend and a fictional martyr of the American Justice System.
Machine Gun Kelly
George “Machine Gun” Kelly
Like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly has endured as one of the most famous gangsters of the prohibition era. “Machine Gun” was born George Kelly Barnes on July 18, 1895, to a wealthy family living in Memphis, Tennessee. His early years as a child were uneventful and his family raised him in a traditional household. The first sign of trouble began when he enrolled at Mississippi State University in 1917 to study agriculture and engineering. From the beginning, Kelly was considered a poor student. He was constantly in trouble with the faculty and spent much of his academic career attempting to work off demerits earned for troublesome behavior.
It was during this time that Kelly met Geneva Ramsey, the daughter of a contractor for whom he worked part-time. Kelly quickly fell in love with Geneva and made an abrupt decision to quit school and marry. The couple had two children and in an effort to make ends meet, Kelly worked in various construction camps around the Memphis area. He worked long hours with little compensation for his time. Kelly and Geneva struggled financially as the construction work was failing to provide enough money to support their family. Distressed and broke, the strain proved to be overwhelming and Kelly left his job to seek other ways to make ends meet. At nineteen years of age, he found himself without steady work and separated from his wife. Kelly then hooked up with a smalltime gangster and started a new venture as a bootlegger. He seemed to enjoy the financial rewards of his new trade, as well as the notoriety. But along with this new success came the difficulties of working in the underworld. After being arrested on several occasions for illegal trafficking, Kelly decided to leave Memphis with a new girlfriend and head west. It was during this period when he adopted the alias of George R. Kelly, to preserve the reputation of his upstanding family back home. Kelly’s luck varied, with hugely profitable scores alternating with several unfortunate mishaps. By 1927, Kelly had already started to earn a reputation in the underground world as a seasoned gangster, having weathered several arrests and various jail sentences. In 1928 he was caught smuggling liquor into an Indian Reservation and was sentenced to three years at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
After serving another long sentence at the State Penitentiary in New Mexico in 1929, Kelly gravitated to Oklahoma City, where he hooked up with a smalltime bootlegger named Steve Anderson. Kelly soon fell for Anderson’s attractive mistress Kathryn Thorne, a seasoned criminal in her own right. Thorne came from a family of outlaws and had been arrested for various charges ranging from robbery to prostitution. She was twice divorced and her second husband had been a bootlegger, who was later found shot to death under suspicious circumstances. The official determination held that his death was a suicide, but many people (including one of the investigators) had long suspected that Kathryn was involved result from assorted threats she had been known to make against him. Kelly and Kathryn became inseparable, and in September of 1930, they married in Minneapolis.
Up until he began his relationship with Thorne, Kelly had been a relatively smalltime criminal. But Kathryn’s influence soon became obvious, as Kelly’s crime sprees would win him the prestigious status of “Public Enemy Number One.” Kathryn purchased a machine gun for Kelly and criminal lore is that she pressured her husband to practice. It was said that her purpose was premeditated – she was a master at marketing her husband to underground circles and to the public. She was known to take the spent gun cartridges and pass them around to acquaintances at many of the underground drinking clubs, introducing them as souvenirs from her husband “Machine Gun Kelly.”
Many historians and fellow inmates of Kelly believe that Kathryn was the creator of the “Machine Gun Kelly” image, and she became known as the mastermind behind several of the successful small bank robberies that Kelly pulled off throughout Texas and Mississippi. In August of 1933, the FBI published “wanted” posters describing Kelly as an “expert machine gunner” and thus creating a public frenzy that would later place Kelly into the history books.
In July of 1933 Kathryn and George Kelly plotted a scheme to kidnap wealthy oil tycoon and businessman Charles Urschel. A formal report written on January 16, 1934 by FBI agent Paul Hansen described the events in detaiclass="underline"
On the night of July 22, 1933, Mr. And Mrs. Charles F. Urschel were engaged in a social bridge game with their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Jarrett in the sun-parlor on the ground floor of the Urschel home in Okalahoma City. Oklahoma. At approximately 11:15 P.M., two widely known underworld characters entered this room; one was Albert L. Bates, who is known by that and many other names throughout the United States as a thief, burglar, bank robber, safe blower, extortionist, and kidnapper, and he carried an automatic pistol; and the other was George Kelly Barnes, more familiarly known as George Kelly and “Machine-gun Kelly,” who is known throughout North America as a liquor runner, thief, robber, kidnapper, and close associate of organized underworld gangs. And he carried a machine gun. The latter demanded, “Which is Urschel? We want Urschel.” As no one present replied, Barnes there upon said, “Well, we will take them both.” Then, by force of arms, they marched Urschel and Jarrett out through the backyard to a car, which was parked in the driveway of the Urschel home. Shortly after leaving the Urschel home, the abductors took from the possession of Urschel his wallet containing about $60.00 in cash, and from Mr. Jarrett his wallet with approximately $50.00 in cash. At a point about ten miles northeast of Oklahoma City, the kidnappers had satisfied themselves, from an examination of the identification cards in each wallet and a statement made by Mr. Urschel, which was Urschel, and Jarrett was released.