Rhyging

The film was later adapted as a stage musical, with a script overseen by Henzell, and was first staged in 2006 at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, subsequently transferring to other theatres, with Rolan Bell playing the role of Rhyging.

Michael Thelwell's 1980 novel The Harder They Come, derived from the film, is also a sympathetic account of his life, and portrays him as an innocent victim of con-men when he first arrives in Kingston.

His life inspired the 1972 film The Harder They Come, Jamaica's first feature film, starring Jimmy Cliff as Ivan Martin and directed by Perry Henzell. In the film Rhyging is portrayed as a reggae singer and song writer, who is tricked out of the rights to his songs and is drawn into drug-dealing, but becomes famous as he achieves notoriety for his crimes. According to Cliff, "Rhygin was very much on the side of the people; he was a kind of Robin Hood, I guess you could call him". Together with the movie Ivan is also referred to in the song "The Guns of Brixton" by the rock band The Clash.

Vincent "Ivanhoe" Martin (1924–9 September 1948), known as "Rhyging", was a Jamaican criminal who became a legendary outlaw and folk hero, often regarded as the "original rude boy". He became notorious in 1948 after escaping from prison, going on the run and committing a string of robberies, murders and attempted murders before he was gunned down by police. In subsequent decades his life became mythologised in Jamaican popular culture, culminating in the 1972 cult film The Harder They Come, in which he is portrayed by Jimmy Cliff.

Born Vincent Martin in Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica, he turned to a life of violent crime in his teenage years after moving to Kingston. Short and slim with an "effeminate" voice, he compensated by building a reputation for extreme violence. He was first arrested at 14 for wounding, for which he was sentenced to a birching. Further arrests for wounding and larceny followed, leading to a six-month stint in gaol. After this, he became part of a criminal gang and adopted a variety of pseudonyms, including "Ivanhoe", "Alan Ladd" and "Captain Midnight". In 1946 he was arrested for robbery, beginning his career of self-dramatisation by defending himself in court, irritating the judge with his "long-winded" and grandiose speeches. After a year in gaol, he was released, but quickly committed another robbery, for which he was convicted and sentenced to a five-year term. On 30 April 1948 he escaped from gaol. What followed was a period of several months during which he eluded police, ending in an intense six-week crime spree in West Kingston. Lurid reports about the spree appeared in the Daily Gleaner newspaper, which popularised his nickname "Rhyging".

Rhyging hid out with some friends for a while near his childhood home in St. Catherine, but police were informed of his whereabouts. He managed to flee to Lime Cay, but again police were quickly tipped off. On 9 September 1948, they swooped on his hideout. He fought off police for an hour, but was killed when he attempted a break-out. He died, aged 24, of gunshot wounds on the beach at Lime Cay. He had been shot five times in the head, and several times all over his body. He may have been hiding at Lime Cay while waiting for a boat to take him to Cuba. Police at the time believed that he intended "to board a boat which would take him out of the island or to someplace on the south-western coast of the island."

Martin became a folk-hero for the poverty-stricken residents of the Jamaican ghettos of the 1940s, acquiring an anti-hero persona, "much like John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde". According to Kevin Aylmer, he became a "cultural icon of the Jamaican working class" because of his self-identification as a hero of "Hollywood 'oat operas', and his masculine swagger allied with an uncanny ability to seemingly appear and disappear at will". Shortly after his death Jamaican comedians Bim and Bam created a drama called Rhygin’s Ghost. A song about him entitled "Rhygin" is the B-side of Prince Buster's 1965 single "Ten Commandments". He is also the subject of Louise Bennett-Coverley's 1966 poem "Dead Man", written in Jamaican patois. The poem "balances acceptance of the moral propriety of his necessary demise against the vicarious thrill of identification with his apparently indomitable badness".