20,000 Years in Sing Sing

Tom Connors walks into Sing Sing telling everyone on the way through the gate how important he is. He believes he has a lawyer outside and will be out in a few months. The warden is hard, but he is trying to make something of the man rather than break him. Connors learns it a piece at a time: in the cell, on the rock pile, in a riot. Then his girl Fay is in an accident and the warden lets him out on his word: go, come back. What happens outside puts Connors in the electric chair. Michael Curtiz directs; seventy-eight minutes, with Spencer Tracy as Connors and Bette Davis as Fay. It is adapted from the book by Lewis Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing, who argued for prison reform, and the film carries his view of it.