“STROUD WAS GIVEN 60 DAYS WITHIN WHICH TO DISPOSSESS HIMSELF OF HIS BIRDS”: WRITER THOMAS GADDIS’ BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ ARCHIVE, INCLUDING 23 AUTOGRAPH ORIGINAL LETTERS AND AN IMPASSIONED HANDWRITTEN LEGAL BRIEF BY THE BIRDMAN
(STROUD, Robert) GADDIS, Thomas E. Birdman of Alcatraz archive, including first editions, correspondence, and related materials. No city: no publisher, circa 1953-1965. Ten octavo books, four three-ring binders, one four-ringer binder, galley proofs, four scrapbooks, one mounted portrait photograph. $48,000.
Archive of correspondence and legal briefs, with 23 handwritten letters and one handwritten legal brief by Robert “Birdman” Stroud, including research materials, clippings, and other information relating to the book and film versions of The Birdman of Alcatraz, formerly belonging to writer Thomas E. Gaddis.
Sentenced to 12 years for murdering an associate in Alaska in 1909, Robert Stroud was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas in 1912, where he killed a prison guard in 1916 and was sentenced to death. While on death row, he began breeding canaries and selling them to help support his mother. At Leavenworth, he authored two books: Diseases of Canaries (1933) and Stroud’s Digest on the Diseases of Birds (1943), “still considered a standard work of the diagnosis and treatment of avian diseases” (Gus Schwabe, DVM). Stroud protested to authorities about not receiving royalties from Diseases of Canaries in 1933, and prison officials decided to transfer him to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Through the use of a legal loophole, Stroud was able to remain at Leavenworth until 1942, at which point he was moved to Alcatraz, without his birds. In 1959, due to poor health, Stroud was moved to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he died in 1963 at the age of 73. He had been incarcerated for 54 years, 42 of which were spent in solitary confinement.
In 1955, crime writer Thomas E. Gaddis published his sympathetic biography of Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz. Gaddis’ book was made into a hit movie in 1962, starring Burt Lancaster as Stroud, and petitions calling for his release or parole were circulated in the lobbies of cinemas showing the film. The success of the movie fueled sales of the book and garnered overseas interest.
This archive contains many of the documents Gaddis used while researching and writing his book, including:
*Two three-ring binders containing Stroud’s personal and legal correspondence and many of Stroud’s own carbon copies of typed letters, 23 of them originals handwritten by Stroud; an impassioned 24-page handwritten brief by Stroud, written while at Alcatraz, pertaining to Leavenworth prison authorities reneging on promises concerning Stroud’s breeding and selling of canaries, rights to royalties from the publication of his books, equipping of Stroud’s laboratory, Stroud’s freedom of correspondence, and moving Stroud to Alcatraz; extensive correspondence with his lawyer, Stanley Furman; and photocopies of drafts of letters from Elizabeth Stroud to Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and the U.S. Attorney General asking for clemency on her son’s behalf.
*One tall four-ring binder containing legal briefs and correspondence.
*Gaddis’ copies of Stroud’s two bird books.
*Gaddis’ galley copies for Birdman.
*Gaddis’ American, English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish first editions of Birdman, plus later Italian and German editions, many with Gaddis’ bookplate.
*Gaddis’ three large scrapbooks containing newspaper and magazine clippings related to Stroud and the publication of Birdman.
*Two three-ring binders containing Guy Trosper’s original and revised screenplays for the movie of Birdman, as well as publicity stills and ancillary materials.
*Oversized scrapbook containing clippings and pressbook for the movie.
*An 8 by 10-inch photograph of Stroud taken in 1962, mounted on board, total size 16-1/2 by 11-1/4 inches.
A rare archive, offering insight into the life and legal struggles of one of America’s most notorious prisoners.