If you were to overhear someone talking about “The Rock” today, nine out of 10 people would think that the subject of conversation was action movie star and former wrestler Dwayne Johnson. But if you had overheard the same conversation eight decades earlier, when James Cagney was the toughest guy in movies and wrestlers had names like Gorgeous George, there would have been no doubt what the topic of conversation was. The only “Rock” back then was Alcatraz, the maximum-security prison perched on a small island in San Francisco Bay.
For almost 30 years, Alcatraz was the ultimate destination for the country's most dangerous and wily criminals. Prisoners who were uncontrollable at other penal institutions were at last tamed by the severity of life at Alcatraz, while restless inmates who made a habit of breaking out of other prisons on the mainland found that their days of easy escapes were over. Almost 40 tried, but no one ever successfully escaped the citadel perched on the rock in the bay.
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