Alfred Uhry

“They Won’t Forget” is a classic 1937 film with movie star Lana
Turner. The film tells the story of a small-town prosecutor who takes
on the scandalous case of a local teenage girl’s murder in order to
make it to the press. The film is based on the true story of Leo
Frank, a Jewish-American businessman who was lynched to his death
after being framed for the murder of Mary Phagan.

Thane begins the conversation with Alfred and Morris, noting that Abe
Foxman was not able to attend tonight because he is in Israel.

Thane to Alfred: were you influenced by Leo Frank’s case?
Alfred: Yes, because Leo Frank had a factory near my mother’s house.
So much of the story was pure politics.
Thane: There was a famous NY attorney in Leo Frank’s case?
Alfred: No, he was a southern lawyer but seen as a Yankee lover.
Anyone with connections to the North was seen as suspect.
Thane: Is it true a number of Jewish families left Atlanta for the north?
Alfred: I know of some who left, but returned.
Morris: Unlike in the film, Leo’s wife was from Atlanta.

Thane: There is no Jewish lawyer in the film; they focus on southern
and northern antagonism. Why didn’t Warner Brothers make this about
Leo Frank and his Jewish identity?
Morris: The anti-Semitic angle wasn’t viewed as the crucial issue of
the case. The deeper element is, this is one of the social protest
dramas of the 30s. It was amazing for Hollywood, it hadn’t been done
before, and yet there are limitations to Hollywood. In Leo franks
case, he was a blindness victim. The DA was a villain in many ways,
who successfully used the case to further his private ambition. This
played into social protest mode of 30s. This movie was part of a
pattern of Warner Brothers movies on social protest.
Thane: Alfred, your family never left Atlanta. And your family lived
so close to Frank’s factory.
Alfred: We assume Leo Frank didn’t do it – 99% – there were just
unexplained things. That’s what makes the story live on, because who
did kill this woman?
Morris: the script was made so that you would not know who did it. The
janitor was reading the sex magazine. The boyfriend had anger for
being stood up. The founder of the school seemed pretty hostile to the
woman.
Alfred: We are pretty sure Leo Frank didn’t do it. My family was in
the South before Leo Frank appeared, and what shocked them was not
that this young man could be humiliated and lynched, but that a Jew
was a Jew. My family considered themselves Southern; but seeing this
guy be lynched as if he was walking with a yarmulke really shook them.
Unlike Lana Turner, the real girl was young – 12 or 13 – and there was
child labor going on. Yankees were seen as exploiting her, and its
true her mother was brought in and her clothes were waived in the
courtroom. All that is true.

Morris Dickstein and Alfred Uhry

Thane: Driving Miss Daisy is reopening on Broadway, this Monday night. Alfred wrote the play. In your other play, there is a New Yorker Jew who isn’t accepted by the Southern Jews.

Alfred: we were raised Jewish, but with the knowledge that being
Jewish was a shame.

Morris: Miss Daisy doesn’t seem very Jewish.
Thane: During the temple bombing – in 1958 – the biggest synagogue in Atlanta experienced the equivalent of a terrorist attack. Daisy’s car is all the way in the back, and when she is told the temple was blown up she said “but we are reform Jews.” The idea of the northeastern Jewcoming to the Deep South…
Morris: The cast was nationalized in the movie, creating an issue –
the New York Times took up the case, and this was the first or last
time the paper took up an issue like this. Like Hollywood movies, they
try to deemphasize any Jewish element. The press pulled out of
concentration camps.

Thane: Would you say this is the American version of the Dreyfuss affair?
Alfred: That was more official, with the government.
Thane: But the hysteria in France?
Morris: It’s the American version of the Beillis case in Russia.
Intertwined stories.
Thane: The Moshe Beillis blood libel case in Russia. Morris is
reminding us that blood libel was virtually same time as Leo Frank,
1913. The Dreyfuss case was 10 years before. We had Richard Dreyfuss
here at the forum before; unrelated to Alfred Dreyfuss; who made a
film called “Prisoner of Honor.” Richard plays an anti-Semitic French
officer who stands up for Alfred because he couldn’t let him be guilty
for ac rime he didn’t commit. These affairs are roughly about the same
time.
Alfred: Jews are a minority, less of us than everyone else. There are
fewer blacks and less Muslims. It’s easy to say they don’t think like
us, they don’t worship like us, and this guy is one of them. Easy to
peg someone a little different than going after president of the
country club.
Morris: Important note about Dreyfuss case; old community versus
progressive community – like Zola, who because part of the defense.
Parallel to this story, where Warner Brothers had been part of this
social process movement. The original source material was obstructed
by Georgia, who made a settlement that the state would never be
mentioned. Difference in the movie of the 1930’s – this movie came in
1937 and there was a censorship office that negotiated every detail.
The script was more intense, as the police was corrupt and built
witnesses like the black janitor.
Alfred: Black janitor was a guy named Connolly. 60s years later, a
witness came forth and said he saw Connolly do it. Leo Frank was
uptight and not everyone liked him.

Morris: Actors in movie came out later, like Lana Turner.
Alfred: This movie is known for Lana. I think this was her first movie.

Thane: This story gave birth to Anti Defamation League, as well as the
Ku Klux Klan. The KKK committed the lynching, and they were called the
Knights of Mary Phagan (girl was killed.) Many years later they found
out who was behind the hoods.
Alfred: A former governor and judge.
Thane: The Princes of George’s society behind masks.
Morris: No one was charged.

Thane: An interesting double feature would be the film To Kill A
Mockingbird. Both films are silent about Jewish dimension but speak to
underlying fears of the south. The northern industrialist who we have
to work for. South feels diminished. The other case, an African
American who can’t defeat testimony of white person no matter who
white person is.
Alfred: Hopefully those days are long gone. The other thing during Leo
Frank was the Birth of the Nation, playing across the country during
this period, which was made by KKK.
Thane: Didn’t Woodrow Wilson show it in the white house? It’s a despicable film.

Alfred: In the film we just saw, the drunken reporter who was passed
out in the car was true. And it did happen on Memorial Day.
Thane: What about the first scene? The image of the old Confederate
soldiers, nervous that the south would be forgotten.
Alfred: Its true. People here forget what it meant to live in a state
occupied. People fought and died for the state. There was great hatred
for the lost cause they so believed in. They were humiliated and it
takes a hundred something years to get past. Being a Georgia boy, it
wasn’t so black and white. It was not just crazy people running
around.
Thane: Interesting that what many people believe is the true murder is
a black southern man and the white man from the north is framed.
Morris: Strangely, smith who was layer for black man who probably
killed Mary Phagan wrote when he was dying that he was a liberal who
was trying to protect the black men. He wrote his client was guilty
and he helped get him off. When prosecutor became government, I read
he became a more progressive government. This is full of paradoxes.

Thane: This court went to the Supreme Court, who denied rehearing.
There were two dissenters, Holmes and Hughes, and it didn’t get close
to taking to appeal.
Morris: Well there is the issue of the governor, whose career was
destroyed by reducing the death sentence sentence of Leo Frank.
Alfred: He knew by taking the stand he would have to leave the state.
Morris: He represents a more honorable tradition and the prosecutor
represents an opportunist.
Alfred: He realized there was circumstantial evidence and the
witnessed had been coached. He said, 2,000 years ago another governor
sent a Jew to his death and I don’t want to be his accused and my name
go down in history like that.
Thane: What’s the name of that Jew?
Alfred: I think his name was Michael Jackson.

THANE OPENS CONVERSATION UP TO CROWD FOR SOME QUESTIONS.
EVENING ENDS ON A HIGH NOTE, with a reminder that the Fordham Film
Festival concludes tomorrow night with the film “…And Justice for
All.”