They Won't Forget

Uncommon card · No. 157040

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.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Warner Bros., Public domain