High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 20,000 Years in Sing Sing is a 1932 American black-and-white drama film set in Sing Sing Penitentary, the notorious maximum security prison in New York State. This movie was directed by Michael Curtiz, and it starred the noted actors Spencer Tracy as the main convict, and Bette Davis as his girlfriend. This movie was based upon the nonfiction book Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, which was written by Lewis E. Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing from 1920 to 1941.