They Won't Forget (1937)

Set in a sleepy Southern town, a politically ambitious public prosecutor (Claude Rains) uses the murder of a pretty schoolgirl (Lana Turner) as a starting point to a political career that will hopefully take him to the governor's mansion. But is the young Northerner (Edward Norris) he's prosecuting really guilty or is the prosecutor using Southern prejudice toward "Yankees" to stir up the rabble? Based on the novel DEATH IN THE DEEP SOUTH by Ward Greene (a fictionalized version of the Leo Frank case) and directed by Mervyn LeRoy (I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG). By fictionalizing the story, the book and film eliminate the anti-Semitism (Leo Frank was Jewish) present in the murder case. The film is crudely effective and makes its point without proselytizing and I liked it better than Fritz Lang's FURY which has a similar lynch mob mentality theme. I wish the acting were better though. Typical of Warner Brothers' grittier fare, the film was Lana Turner's breakthrough. Jauntily walking down the street braless in a tight sweater, she caused a sensation. In the 1940s, both Turner and LeRoy went to MGM where LeRoy stopped making the tough socially conscious movies he did at Warners and embraced the MGM "style" while the fresh faced Turner was turned into a blonde glamour girl whose sheen got more brittle as the years passed. With Gloria Dickson, Allyn Joslyn, Otto Kruger, Ann Shoemaker, Elisabeth Risdon, Clinton Rosemond and Elisha Cook Jr.