: As the most socially conscious studio of the Depression years, Warner Bros. had turned out dozens of crusading pictures on topics ranging from capital punishment to American fascists. Mervyn LeRoy had already castigated Southern bigotry and extra-legal terrorism in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. They Won't Forget follows on the NAACP's published findings that 99% of the lynchings committed since 1882 had gone unpunished, and the death-by-filibuster of a federal antilynching bill drafted by NAACP lawyers. Here, LeRoy's hatred of Southern types enables him to create in the character of Andy Griffin (Claude Rains) a devastating portrait of the small-town redneck politician, who chooses a Northern teacher-an outsider-as scapegoat in the case of a murdered coed. The film has an all-too-easy focus on peculiarly Southern forms of racial violence, but despite the sledgehammer approach They Won't Forget is a superbly crafted work, thematically bold in its illustration of the NAACP's findings and powerfully dramatic in its effects. -Treasures from the Eastman House, PFA