Crime and celebrity fit together like hand in glove. Little wonder that movies are a facet of the page-turning new book from Time Life, Mysteries of the Criminal Mind: The Secrets Behind the World’s Most Notorious Crimes.
Art (and entertainment) often follows life—and many movies about criminals were based in truth. As Mysteries reminds us, The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) starred Burt Lancaster in a fictionalized account of the strange Robert Stroud, diagnosed as a violent psychotic and sentenced in 1909 to Alcatraz for multiple murders. He died on the island prison in 1963 after raising canaries in his cell and publishing books on birds that were prized by ornithologists. Aside from the occasional criminal bio movie, memorable crimes have been the basis of such varied movies as Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) to Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia(2006).
Mysteries of the Criminal Mind covers all ends of the rap sheet, from serial cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer to white collar swindler Bernie Madoff, from Bonnie and Clyde to the Mexican cartels—all of them subjects of feature films and documentaries. In a section called “Fame: The Prequel,” we learn that Tim Allen did two years in a federal penitentiary for drug trafficking (1979-1981), Mark Wahlberg received a slap on the wrist for assault (1988) and Nick Nolte was fortunate in receiving a suspended sentence for selling counterfeit documents (1962).
