John Campbell Bruce

Newspaperman, playwright and author John Campbell Bruce, whose 1963 book "Escape From Alcatraz" was the basis of the hit Clint Eastwood movie, died Saturday at his Berkeley home after a brief illness. He was 90.

Mr. Bruce's byline, "J. Campbell Bruce," graced Bay Area newspapers for more than 50 years, 33 of them at The Chronicle, where he was known as a stylish feature writer and a fast and concise rewrite man.

In addition to writing thousands of news articles over the years, Mr. Bruce also wrote the 1963 play "Paint The House White," which was produced at the Pasadena Playhouse; and, in 1954, a book, "The Golden Door: The Irony of Our Immigration Policy." He also wrote magazine articles and television scripts.

Mr. Bruce was born in Helvetia, Pa., the son of a coal miner foreman who moved his family from town to town in western Pennsylvania, finally settling in Dubois, Pa., where Mr. Bruce went to high school and was valedictorian of the class of 1924. He then went to nearby Allegheny College. When a friend who was at Stanford University returned during vacation and regaled him with tales of California, Mr. Bruce promptly left Allegheny and hitchhiked west, stopping "for a month or two in Wyoming to work on a ranch, which was completely unlike him," his son Anthony Bruce said yesterday, noting that his father was "very creative and quite sedentary."

Mr. Bruce entered San Jose State University (then known as San Jose State College) in the mid- 1920s, but soon began moonlighting for various newspapers. He eventually left college and, following the itinerant nature of his father, worked for a succession of newspapers in San Jose, Hollister and Pittsburg. In San Francisco, he worked for the now-defunct Call- Bulletin and, from 1942 until 1975, for The Chronicle.

During World War II, Mr. Bruce served in China for the government's Office of War Information. After the war, he wrote news stories and features for The Chronicle, where he was known as a perfectionist who from time to time would get into arguments over the editing of his stories. In 1971, four years before he retired, he took the highly unusual step of permanently removing his byline from the newspaper's pages.

"He was fast, he was accurate and he was one of the most conscientious reporters I've known," said retired Chronicle reporter Charles Raudebaugh, who knew Mr. Bruce well. "It concerned him greatly if he made what anybody else would consider a normal mistake under the pressure of writing for a daily paper."

In 1979, Clint Eastwood made a movie based on Mr. Bruce's book about three convicts who broke out of the then-federal prison, Alcatraz, in 1962 and disappeared into San Francisco Bay. Their fate has never been resolved -- no bodies were found and the three men, John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris, never surfaced.

In 1989, when NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" did a special program on Alcatraz, Mr. Bruce told The Chronicle that he believed the three convicts "got away from the island, yes, but they're not alive. If they got away, Morris, the ringleader, could have kept his mouth shut. But the other two were boisterous types, and they couldn't have kept quiet for six months, let alone 27 years."

Mr. Bruce is survived by his wife, Bianca; sons Anthony of Berkeley, and Kevin of Los Gatos; a daughter, Lisa M. B. Bruce of Berkeley; a brother, Robert, of Yountville; two grandchildren; five nephews and two nieces. A memorial service is pending.