Mark Dawidziak - The Shawshank Redemption Revealed

MARK DAWIDZIAK HAS BEEN THE TELEVISION CRITIC AT THE CLEVELAND Plain Dealer since July 1999. During his sixteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held such posts as TV columnist, movie critic, and critic-at-large.

Before moving to Ohio in 1983, he worked as a theater, film, and TV critic at newspapers in Tennessee and Virginia. He began his journalism career in the late 70s at the Associated Press and Knight-Ridder bureaus in Washington, DC.

Also an author and playwright, his many books include two histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook (1989) and The Night Stalker Companion (1997). Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone, his lighthearted tribute to Rod Serlings celebrated anthology series, was published in 2017.

A recognized Mark Twain scholar, his acclaimed books on the author include Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing (1996), Horton Footes The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003), Mark Twain in Ohio (2015), Mark Twains Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness (2015), and Mark Twain for Cat Lovers (2016). He frequently is invited to lecture on Twain or television history at universities, libraries, and museums. A contributing scholar to several prestigious anthologies about Twain, he has been the guest lecturer three times at Elmira Colleges Center for Mark Twain Studies. He also has presented papers on Mark Twain at five consecutive State of Mark Twain Studies conferences at Elmira College. No less an authority than Ken Burns has said, Nobody gets Mark Twain the way Mark Dawidziak does.

In addition to The Night Stalker Companion, a history of the Carl Kolchak character, his work on the horror side of the street includes the 1994 novel Grave Secrets, a play (The Tell-Tale Play), such nonfiction books as The Bedside, Bathtub, & Armchair Companion to Dracula (2008), short stories, and comic book scripts. Several of his essays and introductions appear in Richard Mathesons Kolchak Scripts (2003) and Bloodlines: Richard Mathesons Dracula, I Am Legend, and Other Vampire Stories (2006), two books he edited for Gauntlet Press. He contributed the career appreciation and overview to Produced and Directed by Dan Curtis (2004), and he is the creative consultant to Moonstones comic book series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Written with Paul J. Bauer, the literary biography Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler was published by the Kent State University Press in 2011. Its the first full-length biography of hobo writer Jim Tully, a forgotten author hailed as Americas Gorky and as a literary superstar in the 20s and 30s. In preparation for the biography, he and Bauer have edited and written introductions for four Kent State University Press reprints of books by Tully: Beggars of Life, Circus Parade, Shanty Irish (with a foreword by John Sayles), and The Bruiser.

Dawidziak and his wife, actress Sara Showman, founded the Largely Literary Theater Company in 2002. Dedicated to promoting literacy and literature, the company has staged his three-person version of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and his two-act play based on sketches by Mark Twain, The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated. In addition to directing the Largely Literary plays, he portrays Twain and Dickens. He met his wife when both were cast in a production of Neil Simons The Good Doctor (he played the Anton Chekhov role, later appearing with her as the H. L. Mencken character in Inherit the Wind). He and Showman have developed play versions of several of his books, including Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone and Mark Twains Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness, which theyve performed in several states.

As a performer, he has been a member of two comedy teams (using the stage name Mark Daniels). In 1993, he reunited with one of his former partners to win the routine contest at the first-ever Abbott & Costello Convention.

His Critics Classics video essay on director Frank Capras Meet John Doe was shown regularly on the American Movie Classics cable channel, and he has appeared in such documentaries as the A&E Biography profile of Peter Falk and AMCs Visionaries: James Camerons Story of Science Fiction. He has written the liner notes for the Columbia House Video Librarys Collectors Editions of several TV series, including Columbo, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Quincy, The Odd Couple, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Carol Burnett Show, F Troop, Hart to Hart, Magnum, P.I., and Murder, She Wrote.

Dawidziak also has been a regular contributor to such magazines as TV Guide, Commonwealth, Cinefantastique, Scarlet Street, Mystery Scene, Sci-Fi Universe, Not of This Earth, Knoxville Lifestyle, Self-Reliant, Ohio Magazine, and Parents Choice. A member of the Television Critics Associations board of directors for five years, he has won five Cleveland Press Club awards for entertainment writing, as well as a Society of Professional Journalists award for coverage of minority issues. In 2015, he was inducted into the Press Club of Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame.

A journalism graduate of George Washington University, he was born in Huntington, New York. He lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife and their daughter, Rebecca Becky Claire.

THIS BOOK HAD FRIENDS. LOTS AND LOTS OF FRIENDS. ONE OF THE early champions of this Shawshank celebration was Gere Goble, the editor at the Mansfield News Journal. We met at a book fair in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October 2017, when the idea of doing something on The Shawshank Redemption was restricted to a lengthy chapter in a bigger book about Stephen King. She was incredibly enthusiastic and encouraging. The next time we met was at a book fair in Columbus, Ohio, in April of 2018, and, by then, the idea had shifted to a book-length study for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film largely shot in Mansfield. Gere was even more enthusiastic and encouraging than she had been six months earlier. She put me in touch with Mansfield News Journal reporter Lou Whitmire, who covered the making of the film for the paper and ended up being in it as an extra. Lou, in turn, put us in touch with many of the key people we needed to meet to flesh out the Shawshank story. We appreciate their guidance and generosity.

And by we I mean me and my daughter, Becky, a gifted writer and photographer who accompanied me on research trips to Mansfield, Upper Sandusky, and other locations, taking many of the pictures for this book. I am grateful not only for the wide selection of wonderful photographs, but for her company, her ideas, and the smiles we shared along the way.

When Becky and I made our first trip to Mansfield, our first stop was the Mansfield News Journal building, where Gere and Lou continued to bowl us over with their graciousness and kindness. They offered us a desk to use when we were in Mansfield. They shared their memories and insights on all things Shawshank. And they handed us the newspapers files on both the Ohio State Reformatory and The Shawshank Redemption, an invaluable record.

The A-Team in Mansfield and Upper Sandusky also included: Lee Tasseff, president of Destination Mansfield, who was instrumental in getting the film to set up headquarters in the city; Jodie Snavely, the group tour and media director at Destination Mansfield (and the creator of the Shawshank Trail tour); Dan Smith, event and social media coordinator at the Ohio State Reformatory, who arranged unlimited access to the historic prison and its grounds; Bill and April Mullen, who own and operate the