MANSFIELD — Clancy Brown will have a chance to see three decades of improvement when he returns to Shawshank State Prison.
The 65-year-old Ohio native, who portrayed Capt. Byron Hadley in the “Shawshank Redemption,” will return to the Ohio State Reformatory in August for the first time since the iconic movie was filmed here in 1993 and released in 1994.
“The hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison” will participate in the 30th-anniversary celebration of the movie, joining in “Return to Shawshank: An Intimate Evening with the Stars” on Aug. 10, an hour-long event that begins at 4:30 p.m.
OSR was used as the principal filming site for the fictitious prison set in Maine. Brown played a memorable villain who terrorized and murdered Shawshank Prison’s inmates.
The event in the section of OSR where mess hall scenes were filmed is limited to 100 ticket buyers. There will be a discussion moderated by Ben Mankiewicz, popular host of Turner Classic Movies.
In addition to Brown, it will include director/writer Frank Darabont and actors Bob Gunton (Warden Norton), William Sadler (Heywood), Gil Bellows (Tommy Williams) and Mark Rolston (Bogs Diamond).
“Guests will be able to sit where the mess hall scenes were filmed, surrounded on both sides by the cell blocks, for a truly immersive evening,” said Dan Smith, associate director at The Ohio State Reformatory Preservation Society.
There are three levels of tickets for the event. Rows one through three are $250. Rows four through six are $200 and rows seven through 10 are $150.
“Only 100 tickets are available for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you are unable to join us at the Reformatory, you can still watch in real-time during a livecast at the Renaissance Theatre, where the film first premiered in 1994. Tickets to the livecast are through the Renaissance Theatre,” Smith said.
‘Being in Mansfield, Ohio, was a little like being in a prison’
Brown was born in Urbana, Ohio, in Champaign County into the Brown Publishing family business. His grandfather and father both served in Congress and he was born Clarence John Brown III.
He graduated from the private St. Albans Prep School in Washington, D.C., and then Northwestern University.
According to an article in the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, Brown never had ambitions of following in the political footsteps of his father and grandfather. Instead, he opted for an acting career.
“It was just something I wanted to do and I decided I’d give it a shot,” he told the newspaper in 1988.
In junior high, he discovered the thrill of being on stage.
“The bug bit him when he was in ‘The Mouse That Roared,’ which was an interesting anti-government play,” his father recalled during a 1994 Dayton Daily News interview.
He already had more than a dozen movie roles under his belt when he auditioned for “Shawshank Redemption.” Brown worried he bombed the audition when he found it hard to scream “Capt. Hadley profanities” at an assistant casting director.
“It was the worst audition I ever had and the best movie I ever did … go figure,” he said during an interview available on YouTube (see below).
Safe to say that Brown and the rest of the cast were not impressed when they arrived in Mansfield for filming in 1993.
The prison closed at the end of 1990 and was already deteriorating and scheduled for demolition. Mansfield was bleeding jobs at the time with recent factory closures of Westinghouse (1990), Ohio Brass (1990) and Tappan (1992).
“Mansfield Rising” was almost three decades away.
“Being in Mansfield, Ohio, for much of the cast was a little like being in prison. It’s a very depressed place now. It used to be the center of the state, the center of industry. Now it’s completely depressed and run down and fallen apart,” Brown said after the movie was filmed, seen in the aforementioned YouTube video.
Brown, who has remained one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, has always said “Shawshank” is the film he is most often asked about by fans. His movie career includes roles “Highlander,” “Bad Boys (with Sean Penn),” and “Starship Troopers.” Young viewers will recognized him too, as the voice of Mr. Krabs in “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.”
He also has an expansive television career, including turns in “Billions” and “The Crown,” where he portrayed former President Lyndon Johnson.
“(Shawshank) a great movie. I wish I could say why (exactly). I think it rests squarely on the shoulders of Frank (Darabont). The credit just has to be his. He wrote (the screenplay) brilliantly (from the Stephen King novella). He directed it well. He just didn’t make a mistake.
“It’s poetry and its stayed poetry through all of the travails these stories have to go through,” Brown said.
‘I think he will be very impressed with the changes’
Smith has helped lead the restoration efforts of OSR, a century-old prison that admitted its first inmates in 1896 after 10 years of construction. He believes Brown will be surprised when returning to the former prison and to Mansfield.
The gothic structure welcomes thousands of visitors every year and the downtown looks nothing like it did in the early 1990s.
“Some of the other actors who have come back before (like during the 25th anniversary celebration in 2019) have been surprised and pleased. I think (Brown) will be very impressed with improvements at the prison, in the downtown and things in the community,” Smith said.
“I think he will be excited and impressed to see some of the changes and surprised that the prison has become such a huge tourism draw,” he said.
“(Brown coming back) is a big win for Shawshank in general and the 30th anniversary celebration in particular,” Smith said.
“I could not be more excited to make this announcement. This (added event) will take the 30th anniversary of ‘Shawhank’ to an entirely new level,” he said.
“This will be filmed. The idea of getting all of these guys together during a milestone celebration, all of the main (returning) cast as a group and not having them together where they actually filmed the movie would have been a disservice to the fans,” Smith said.
