Judge Priest (1934)

 
BACKGROUND
 

Judge Priest established Will Rogers as the number one box office draw in the nation. The Tulsa Daily World sums up Rogers' performance: “The star's portrayal of Judge Priest has the mark of authenticity upon it … the unique blending of talent with a rich and splendid role.” The film can be seen as an attempt to entice people from southern states to unite with their northern former adversaries in the fight against fascism. The prior year saw the creation of the Friends of New Germany which later became the American Bund or German American Federation with its headquarters in New York City which took its orders directly from Nazi Germany. According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen: “On May 31, 1927, Fred Trump was arrested by police while participating in a Ku Klux Klan march in his home borough of Queens in New York.” Madsen also reports that the elder Trump may have acted as a spy for Germany. 

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Several New York theaters in the thirties were screening propaganda films made by famed Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl. According to author James Whitman the Nazi’s had in fact used the southern Jim Crow Laws as a model for their own racist laws. The Black Legion made racist appeals to whites in the South along with members of the Ku Klux Klan to support the fascist movement. This is the climate in which Judge Priest was conceived, a context needed to properly comprehend what Ford and Rogers were attempting to accomplish. 

PLOT SUMMARY

Judge Priest follows the spirit of the law more than the letter of the law in order to help save an innocent man from prison in a small Kentucky town following the civil war. 

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