They Won't Forget

They Won't Forget is a 1937 film directed by Mervyn LeRoy (who was uncredited). It was based on a novel by Ward Greene called Death in The Deep South, 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. The film was also the film debut of actress Lana Turner, who played the movie's murder victim, Mary Clay. A southern town is rocked by scandal when ... more

They Won't Forget is a 1937 film directed by Mervyn LeRoy (who was uncredited). It was based on a novel by Ward Greene called Death in The Deep South, 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. The film was also the film debut of actress Lana Turner, who played the movie's murder victim, Mary Clay. A southern town is rocked by scandal when teenager Mary Clay is murdered on Confederate Memorial Day. A small-time lawyer with political ambitions, Andrew Griffin, sees the crime as way to the Senate if he can find the right scapegoat to be tried for the crime. He seeks out Robert Hale, Mary's teacher at the business school where she was killed. Even though all evidence against Hale is circumstantial, Hale happens to be from New York (Leo Frank was a Southerner from Texas, but he was Jewish and had been raised in New York), and Griffin works with a reporter to create a media frenzy of... less