JUDGE PRIEST (1934)

My first Will Rogers movie, though because I saw a very poor quality public domain print of this. I'm not sure I should even be reviewing it. The image was murky and there were several jagged cuts where footage seemed to be missing. Rogers, a beloved folksy humorist, plays a beloved folksy judge in a small town in Kentucky. We get a sense of his everyday life in the casual opening section of the film. Rogers' nephew, played by Tom Brown, comes home with a newly minted law degree. He's in love with Anita Louise, a girl of questionable background, and Brown's mother (Brenda Fowler, who seems to be doing an Edna May Oliver imitation without much success) frowns on the match. Luckily, Rogers is on Brown's side and helps to clear the way for Brown to court Louise. There is a lovely summer evening scene where Rogers recalls his late wife (with one of my favorite songs, "Love's Old Sweet Song," playing in the background). Eventually, the rather unsavory man who fathered Louise (David Landau) is charged with attacking another unsavory man, Frank Melton, and Brown becomes Landau's lawyer. The somewhat incoherent ending dashes any real resolution for a sentimental finale in which a minster invokes love, forgiveness, and the Confederacy, and a "Music Man"-like parade ends the film. Henry B. Walthall and Charley Grapewin are also in the cast. Rogers doesn't seem like much of an actor, coming off like an ameteurish mixture of Andy Griffith and Lionel Barrymore, but I assume this laconic acting style was part and parcel of his overall comic persona. Landau is good, as usual, in creating a mean character you love to hate, though his character is redeemed in the end. There are some cringe-inducing black stereotypes, personified by Stepin Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel, and sadly, McDaniel isn't able to transcend her badly written part as she usually does. Still, an interesting chunk of period Americana.