They Won't Forget (1937)

Directed by

Mervyn LeRoy

Genre

drama film, trial film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 35m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.9 of 10 from 33 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In a small town in the American South, a teenage girl is murdered. The district attorney, seeking to advance his career by appealing to bigotry, accuses a teacher from the North of the crime. The town's mob mentality and the trial put the accused man's life in danger.

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What happens

They Won't Forget is a 1937 American crime drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, Edward Norris, Otto Kruger, and Lana Turner. It marked the feature film debuts of both Dickson and Turner. The plot focuses on a trial in a Southern town, where a lynch mob and district attorney (Rains) accuse a Northern teacher (Norris) of the brutal murder of a teenage girl (Turner). It is based on the 1936 novel Death in the Deep South by Ward Greene, which was in turn a fictionalized account of a real-life case: the trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank after the murder of Mary Phagan in 1913 Atlanta, Georgia. Released in New York City in July 1937, They Won't Forget was favorably received by film critics, with many heralding it as the best film of the year. The film was notably faced with censorship in the southern United States, particularly the state of Georgia, where it was effectively banned from theatrical exhibition. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Criminal Lawyer (1937)
• Fury (1936)
• Twilight of Honor (1963)
• Counsel for Crime (1937)
• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• The Witness Chair (1936)
• Wives Under Suspicion (1938)
• Confession (1937)