Escape from Alcatraz is a 1979 American prison thriller film directed by Don Siegel. It is an adaptation of the 1963 non-fiction book of the same name by J. Campbell Bruce and dramatizes the 1962 prisoner escape from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. The film stars Clint Eastwood, and features Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin. Danny Glover appears in his film debut. Escape from Alcatraz marks the fifth and final collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Dirty Harry (1971). Plot In early 1960 Frank Morris, an exceptionally intelligent criminal who has absconded from other facilities, arrives at the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. The Warden curtly informs him that Alcatraz is unique within the US prison system for its exceedingly high level of security and that no inmate has ever successfully escaped. During the conversation Morris steals one of the nail clippers on the desk. Over the next several days Morris makes acquaintances with a few inmates: the eccentric Litmus, who is fond of desserts; English, a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defence; and the elderly Doc, who paints portraits and once grew chrysanthemums at Alcatraz. Morris also makes an enemy of a rapist nicknamed Wolf, who tries to harass him in the showers and later attacks him in the prison yard with a knife. Both men are imprisoned in isolation in the hole. Morris is released while Wolf stays. The Warden discovers that Doc has painted a portrait of him, as well as other guards on the island itself. Despite the paintings being respectful and flattering likenesses, he permanently removes Doc's painting privileges just to be cruel. Doc is depressed and hacks off several fingers of his left hand with a hatchet from the prison workshop before being led away. Later, Morris encounters two bank robbers and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, who are his old friends from another prison sentence, and he links up with prisoner Charley Butts. Morris notices that the concrete around the grille in his cell is weak and can be chipped away, which evolves into an escape plan. Over the next few months Morris, the Anglins, and Butts dig through the walls of their cells with spoons (which have been soldered into makeshift shovels), make papier-mâché dummies