- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJohn Edward Resko
- John Resko was born on February 16, 1911 in New York, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Convicts 4 (1962), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and Here's Hollywood (1960). He died on March 10, 1991 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- At the age of eighteen, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. But, literally at the last minute, his sentenced was commuted from death to life by FDR, who was at that time the governor of New York. Resko remained in prison for twenty years and because of his talent as a painter, eventually attracted the attention of several prominent people, among them Nelson Rockefeller, writer Carl Carmer and others. They visited him in prison and felt that his sentence for murder had been much too severe for a crime that by today's standards would have been considered manslaughter. They also said that he had been totally rehabilitated and worked to gain his release.
Years later, as a free man, he and actor _Joel Grey_ were neighbors in New York and became friends. Totally by accident _Joel Grey_ happened to be walking past an auction gallery which was auctioning off some of FDR's old documents which Eleanor Roosevelt was selling because she felt they had no significant historical value. Grey went in and browsed through a few of the papers and just happened to see the name John Resko on one of them. It was the actual document, signed by FDR, which had kept Resko from being executed in 1931. _Joel Grey_ bought it for fifteen dollars and gave it to him.
John Resko lived a productive life after that and died at the age of eighty. Many of his paintings are in the permanent collections of museums around the country. - Portrayed by actor Ben Gazzara in the film Convicts 4 (1962). The film was taken from Mr. Resko's autobiography "Reprieve". After getting out of prison he became a fairly successful writer in Hollywood during the fifties and sixties.
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