What The Cast Of The Shawshank Redemption Should Look Like

Widely considered to be a modern American classic, The Shawshank Redemption's success was far from assured. Seem impossible? Reacquaint yourself with the film's poor initial showing at the box office in 1994. But thanks to VHS distribution and cable TV, it wasn't long before Frank Darabont's sweeping adaptation of Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption finally found its place at the top of the cinematic heap. Today, many fans consider it to be one of the most iconic and beautiful movies ever made, in spite of its heavy themes of prison, abuse, and torture.

While Stephen King stories tend to be character and description heavy, his novellas break the mold, thanks to their shorter word count. Because of this, many memorable characters get the chance to shine in the film adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption. Some, like Heywood (William Sadler), Floyd (Brian Libby), and Snooze (David Proval) even become more fully developed than they are in the book. Let's examine what changed in the adaptational process, with this round-up of what the cast of The Shawshank Redemption looks like in King's novella.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption's narrator, Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, is a long-time convict who has decided to write down the events surrounding his friend and confidante Andy Dufresne's daring escape. Since Red narrates the story, he's not described much. About his entrance to Shawshank, Red says, "I was young, good-looking, and from the poor side of town." Years later, Red writes, "One day in 1958 I looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I kept in my cell and saw a 40-year-old man looking back at me. A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid with a big mop of carroty red hair, half-crazy with remorse, thinking about suicide. That kid was gone. The red hair was going grey and starting to recede. There were crow's tracks around the eyes." 

In the movie adaptation, Red is played by Black actor Morgan Freeman. Freeman's Red jokes about being Irish, just as Red claims he is in the book. Though this is an obvious departure, we do see Red age quite dramatically on screen, just as he watches himself grow older in the book. In the book, however, we never find out if he actually makes it to Mexico to meet his friend or not.

There are a lot of Shawshank characters competing for the title of absolute worst human being ever, but Captain Byron Hadley is a top contender. As one of the warden's main enforcers, Hadley is quicker to raise his baton than he is to actually solve the prisoners' problems. In King's story, Hadley is described as "a tall, shambling man with thinning red hair. He sunburned easily and he talked loud and if you didn't move fast enough to suit him, he'd clout you with his stick." In the book, we first meet Hadley when Red, Andy, and the crew are tarring the roof of one of the prison buildings.

Red doesn't mince words describing Hadley as Andy gives him financial advice: "There was an emotion dawning on his face, something that was grotesque overlying that long, ugly countenance and that receding, sunburned brow. An almost obscene emotion when seen on the features of Byron Hadley. It was hope." Clancy Brown portrays all of this underlying sadism and menace perfectly in Darabont's movie. However, Brown's Hadley is rarely seen without his captain's hat. Perhaps he's learned not to, from past sunburns?

While both versions of The Shawshank Redemption feature a cast of terrible folks doing awful things to each other, there is also Brooks Hatlen. His character development on screen, as portrayed by James Whitmore, is far more rich than it is in King's story. In large part, this is because the film combines Brooks' story with that of Sherwood Bolton, one of Red's contemporaries. In the book, Sherwood keeps a pigeon named Jake in his cell (and sometimes in his pocket). The day before Sherwood is released, he lets the pigeon go, only for it to be found dead the next day. Brooks Hatlen gains that storyline in the movie, except it's a crow named Jake, not a pigeon. 

King's Brooks Hatlen is otherwise quite a bit like the one in the movie. Brooks is the head librarian, "68 and arthritic when he tottered out of the main gate in his Polish suit and his French shoes, his parole papers in one hand and a Greyhound bus ticket in the other. He was crying when he left." Darabont kept these details in his movie to heartbreaking effect. In the book, Red shares that Brooks died six months later in a homeless shelter. In the film adaptation, he kills himself because life on the outside is too big an adjustment for the life-long prisoner to make.

In both versions of The Shawshank Redemption, we find out alongside Andy Dufresne that a man named Elwood (also known as El in the book, and Elmo in the movie) Blatch has been bragging about killing a woman and her lover up in Maine. Blatch tells this story to Tommy Williams, long before we meet Tommy at Shawshank. "Big tall guy he was," Tommy recounts, "mostly bald, with these green eyes set way down deep in the sockets. Jeez, I hope I never see him again."

According to Tommy, Blatch "sure looked like a man that could do some killing." Red notes that he's known men like this in his time: "Trigger-pullers with the crazy eyes." Played with demented glee by Bill Bolender, Elmo Blatch isn't on screen for much of The Shawshank Redemption. Still, he makes quite an impression with his creepy laugh, and the pure joy in his eyes as he talks about thieving and murdering. He isn't bald, though, sporting a spiky, short haircut that displays his full head of gray hair.