For this issue, subscriber Frank Gutierrez has suggested two movies worth rediscovering, and I concur with his judgment.  I’ll let him describe them, beginning with a 1937 drama.

“They Won’t Forget is noteworthy because it was Lana Turner’s first film.  But beyond that, it’s based on a true story of a man accused of murder.  The movie itself never confirms whether or not this person committed the crime, and paints a very unflattering impression of the South, which is where the story takes place.  The excellent cast includes Edward Norris, Gloria Dickson and Claude Rains.  It isn’t broadcast very often but rates as one of Warner Bros. top social dramas.”

 

I’ll echo Frank’s points, one by one, then make some of my own.  This is Lana Turner’s first film appearance, as her scenes as an extra in the first version of A Star is Born (also 1937) were deleted.  Turner is, indeed, an eyeful, leaving no doubt as to the origin of her nickname, the “Sweater Girl.”

Despite a title card that insists the story is fictional, the film is firmly based on a 1913 murder case in Georgia.  In fact, the story was filmed in 1915 as They Shalt Not Kill, 1935 as Murder in Harlem, 1937 as this version and in 1988 as the TV-movie The Murder of Mary Phagan, and later became a Broadway show called “Parade.”  The film remains ambiguous as to whether accused killer Edward Norris actually commits the crime, which is very unusual and effective.  The film has other points to make, some of which are unflattering to the South, but which I feel are meant to charge our whole rubbernecking society.  Like Fury, They Won’t Forget is an indictment of mob rule, of vigilantism and of popular opinion undermining due process.  The Southern setting allows civil prejudice to flourish, but it also leads to more than a little hammy acting, strident accents and melodrama.

Of all the studios in the 1930s, it was Warner Bros. that tried to reflect contemporary attitudes and issues in its films, and it did so head-on, with no holds barred.  They Won’t Forget, like I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Five Star Final, Black Fury and its gangster pictures, is a Warner Bros. ramrod, identifying an important social concern, then trumpeting the social effects of that concern.  To its great credit, prosecuting attorney Rains (the main character), as well as some of the secondary people are well shaded, becoming neither emblematic nor caricatured.  And the courtroom scenes, with their reporters running rampant, remain as contemporary as today’s latest celebrity scandal.

Not everything works; the elderly Confederate veterans in the beginning have little purpose later, and this drama cannot be termed subtle, yet Mervyn LeRoy’s They Won’t Forget is powerhouse drama with a potent message.  My rating:  ✰ ✰ ✰ ½. (6:4).