Whether or not Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin Brothers survived their escape from Alcatraz is going to continue to be an ongoing what if question for years, but on this day 45 years ago they made their attempt. When I was kid, we saw the Clint Eastwood movie in 1979; its ending was inconclusive on the prisoners’ fate. In the last few years, the show Mythbutsters did an episode using the same means as the infamous trio (I loved that show, it was one of cable TV’s redeeming moments and shows how unimaginative the main networks really are). The trickiest part was getting raincoats from the early Sixties because they’re made of different material today. Before Adam and Jamie even rowed out, they checked for all the conditions the escapees had to deal with, namely the tide (or is it tides?). Based upon the data gathered, the Mythbusters guys picked a different destination instead of the one most think was the goal. Morris and the Anglins may have given false intelligence to throw off search parties and the fourth participant who chickened out. So Jamie, Adam and a third guy actually built the raft of raincoats and rubber cement (it’s been a while since I saw it), pumped it up with an accordian and proceeded to row it out with the makeshift paddles (can’t remember what they were). Now they had the advantage of a camera crew and an emergency team following them if anything went wrong. Despite the raft’s fragility, semi-choppy water and it being dark out, they made it in 40 minutes making the escape plausible.
I would recommend hunting down the segment and watching it for yourself. It was some time ago when I saw it so I am already throwing in a disclaimer on accuracy since my memory isn’t perfect on television. As for the movie? It’s okay. I don’t recall it making Morris or the Anglins sympathetic characters, they were killers and dangerous people. The warden (played by the Prisoner‘s Patrick McGoohan) was a bit of a villain. And don’t call America’s Most Wanted either, if these guys succeeded, they probably died of old age by now.