MANSFIELD — Would The Ohio State Reformatory still be standing if The Shawshank Redemption hadn’t been filmed there in summer 1993?
OSR’s Shawshank Specialist Tom Clark says maybe not.
Had the former prison been knocked down, it’s possible Mansfield never would have experienced Blood Prison or Inkcarceration; it wouldn’t have seen the estimated 500,000 tourists visit a site along The Shawshank Trail from 2013 to 2017, or the resulting $6 million in economic impact; and there would be no memory of Morgan Freeman visiting the “Fun Center of Ohio.”
When OSR caught the attention of Hollywood movie makers, it was slated for demolition. A group of Mansfield residents were arguing for its preservation, but running short on time.
“Imagine this, you’re about to start photography for the movie, so you pull up in your truck, you get out, stretch your legs and across the parking lot you see a giant crane parked there. Swinging from the crane is a wrecking ball. It’s moving, and there’s a man behind the controls,” Clark said, reciting a story he tells at the beginning of his tours.
“You knock on the windows, and you say, no you can’t knock this building down. You show him a signed contract for the filming, and he shows you a contract to demolish the building.”
While the scene is dramatized, Clark said it isn’t far-fetched. The impending demolition of OSR was coming on like a wrecking ball.
But with the arrival of a Hollywood movie crew, its demolition was put on hold.
“They were told, let them make this movie, then you can demolish it … So I always say, a movie about hope helped save a building about hope,” Clark said, nodding to the reformatory’s original purpose to reform rather than punish criminals.
Upon saying this line, Clark typically begins his tours, which features a history of The Shawshank Redemption’s filming and impersonations of the movie’s lead actors. It’s a labor of love, as the movie is one of his favorites.
Before The Shawshank Redemption
In the 1980’s, it became clear the Ohio State Reformatory would not be able to serve its original purpose for much longer.
“That was the idea; this building has been great, and it’s worked incredible, but unfortunately, we need a change,” said OSR’s current associate director Dan Smith. “It got to a point where they knew they were going to build the building behind us and the future of this building was just to be torn down.”
As a result, the cast and crew of The Shawshank Redemption were essentially given free reign of the former prison for filming.
“It was do whatever you want because we’re going to tear the building down afterwards,” Smith said. “That then gave the time for people to come in, say, this building is credible, it’s worth saving … even with all these floors being covered in dirt and dust and just things like that everywhere, they could still say, no, this is an incredible asset we need to save.”
Meanwhile, Destination Mansfield’s Executive Director Lee Tasseff remembers marketing Kingwood Center Gardens, Snow Trails, Malabar Farm, the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and especially the Richland Carrousel Park.
“The carrousel had just been built, so it was the new thing, and it was drawing people from all over the place,” he said.
The Ohio State Reformatory had closed in 1990. It certainly wasn’t a destination. It was an abandoned structure, one that only a few passionate preservationists saw value in keeping.
“Life existed without that … We didn’t have it, so we didn’t know what we were missing,” he said.
Tasseff and current group tour and media director, Jodie Snavely were contacted in early 1993 with the proposition to make a movie, then called “The Shawshank Redemption and Rita Hayworth.” The producers were looking for a prison and OSR seemed a promising fit.
According to Tasseff’s recollection, filmmakers visited OSR on a Monday.
“They said, they were going to another prison, and if they liked it better, they weren’t coming back,” he said.
He received a callback Tuesday afternoon, and the producer was back in Mansfield Wednesday with a promise to send the location manager next week.
“Next week, he shows up, and it’s on,” Tasseff said.
Preparation and casting calls began immediately; filming started in June. Local commotion was rampant.
Hundreds lined up to become extras. Many took vacation hours to participate, and some drove more than an hour daily to be part of the movie-making process.
The immediate impact on Mansfield was clear, but it seemed unfathomable the movie would have any significant impact more than two decades later.
Tasseff didn’t know the cinematographer and set designers brought to Mansfield were among the best in the industry. Even if he had, there was no such thing as “film tourism.
The notion that people would travel from another state or country, to see a structure on the cusp of demolition was not part of the equation.
The movie’s impact
Smith says The Shawshank Redemption sets the former prison apart.
Today it’s a place for Shawshank fans as well as paranormal stories and history.
“I had somebody ask me one time what’s different about this movie than other movies, and I say a lot of places tear the sets down or it’s in private land you can’t go to,” Smith said. “Cars and people come here all times of day or night because it means so much to them.”
Had The Shawshank Redemption been filmed elsewhere, he believes people still would have fought to keep the the former prison standing.
“They would have still tried to obviously save the building just because we do have this magnificent amount of paranormal stories and the historical aspect of everything, but Shawshank is definitely one of the pieces of the puzzle,” he said. “So I think it would still be here for sure, but definitely would have a different feel for people.”
After the movie’s 1994 release, Tasseff was surprised when a handful of fans showed up at Destination Mansfield’s door.
“People started trickling in little by little. They’d walk into the office and ask about the prison,” Tasseff said. “It was random and sporadic. It wasn’t like hoards of people showed up trying to find it, but some people were coming.
“More than anything else, it seemed novel to me.”
What perhaps was most shocking about the spontaneous visits? The movie — outside of Mansfield — wasn’t a hit at first, according to box office standards. It brought in a mere $28 million in revenue initially. It was wildly overshadowed by other 1994 films, Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump, which both turned more than $200 million in box office revenue.
Then, The Shawshank Redemption found a second life on video and television. It’s replayed constantly on cable TV, and has earned cult status with fans echoing memorable lines from the film, including “Get busy living, or get busy dying,” “I had to come to prison to be a crook,” and “Am I being obtuse?”
Destination Mansfield responded by forming The Shawshank Trail, and people began traveling to Mansfield from all over the world. A Massachusetts couple got engaged on the “Road to Buxton,” and more recently a New Zealand man visited all 15 sites on the trail.
“It had this really slow burn. Just like the movie’s storyline, it had this slow build up,” Tasseff said. “It crawled at its own pace, and then, all of a sudden, boom there’s a viable tourism product, and life here has been different ever since.”
