Judge Priest (1934)

Judge Priest, a proud Confederate veteran, uses common sense and considerable humanity to dispense justice in a small town in the Post-Bellum Kentucky.

Director:

John Ford

Writers:

Irvin S. Cobb (based on: character of "Judge Priest"), Dudley Nichols (screen play)

Stars:

Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Will Rogers	...	Judge Priest
Tom Brown	...	Jerome Priest
Anita Louise	...	Ellie May Gillespie
Henry B. Walthall	...	Rev. Ashby Brand
David Landau	...	Bob Gillis
Rochelle Hudson	...	Virginia Maydew
Roger Imhof	...	Billy Gaynor
Frank Melton	...	Flem Talley
Charley Grapewin	...	Sergeant Jimmy Bagby
Berton Churchill	...	Senator Horace Maydew
Brenda Fowler	...	Mrs. Caroline Priest
Francis Ford	...	Juror No. 12
Hattie McDaniel	...	Aunt Dilsey (as Hattie McDaniels)
Stepin Fetchit	...	Jeff Poindexter

Storyline

Judge William "Billy" Priest lives in a very patriotic (Confederate) southern town. Priest plays a laid-back, widowed judge who helps uphold the law in his toughest court case yet. In the meantime, he plays matchmaker for his young nephew.

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Plot Keywords:

judge | confederate | kentucky | post bellum | small town | 

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Taglines:

Yours to love, and to laugh at, again...with all the warm humor, all the rich romance, that made it one of your favorites! (1937 print ad)

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

Passed

Did You Know?

Trivia

First credited film role for Hattie McDaniel.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Judge William 'Billy' Priest: Hear! Hear! Hear! Court's called to order!

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Crazy Credits

Opening card: The figures in this story are familiar ghosts of my own boyhood. The war between the states was over, but its tragedies and comedies haunted every grown man's mind, and the stories that were swapped took deep root in my memory. There was one man Down Yonder I came especially to admire for he seemed typical of the tolerance of that day and the wisdom of that almost vanished generation. I called him Judge Priest, and I tried to draw reasonably fair likenesses of him and his neighbors and the town in which we lived. An old Kentucky town in 1890. --- --- Irvin S. Cobb

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Connections

Featured in Classified X (1998)

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Soundtracks

The Little Brown Jug
(1869) (uncredited)
Music and Lyrics by Joseph Winner
Sung a cappella by Hattie McDaniel with modified lyrics

User Reviews

In Old Kentucky

Will Rogers did three films with director John Ford who probably knew best how to utilize Will Rogers folksy charm and personality on the screen. Judge Priest is the best of the three films Rogers did with Ford. The film is based on a character created by Rogers fellow American humorist Irvin S. Cobb.

Cobb's Judge Priest stories are based on characters created from his childhood in Paducah, Kentucky. Priest is a man very much like Will Rogers in real life, full of homespun wisdom and common sense. The casting is almost perfect, I can't think of anyone else who could have done the role better.

The film is an amalgam of several of those stories the main plot line being the assault of Frank Melton by town misanthrope David Landau. The case would normally come before Will Rogers, but he's forced to recuse himself because it's the first case of Tom Brown who is the nephew of Rogers. Brown is back home now, a newly minted lawyer and he's involved with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Anita Louise. There's a connection between his personal and professional life that Brown little suspects.

Cobb's childhood Kentucky is an idyllic place where even the newly freed black people are contented in their second class status. The racist overtone of Judge Priest is unmistakable and why the film is criticized today. However Irvin S. Cobb was painting an accurate picture of the servile blacks, servile because they had to be. But the Stepin Fetchit character goes way over the top.

Judge Priest was later remade by Ford in the Fifties as The Sun Shines Bright and though the more obvious racial stereotyping got cleaned up somewhat, it could never be eliminated from the film.

But the film because of the presence of Will Rogers gets a high rating from me. It's a chance to see one America's wittiest and wisest men at his homespun best and that opportunity should not be passed up.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 September 1934 (USA)

Also Known As:

Old Judge Priest

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fox Film Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

80 min (copyright length)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1