Walter Matthau is playing Governor John Slaton of Georgia. Not a name most people remember, unless they are into criminal history or the history of the Jewish experience in America. For John M. Slaton was the Governor who sacrificed his political career when he decided to reduce the death sentence on a convicted homicide defendant to life imprisonment. The name of that defendant was Leo Frank.
The case of Leo Frank still reverberates over ninety years after it's grotesquely horrible ending. On Confederate Memorial Day (April 26) 1913, a young, pretty looking girl named Mary Phagan told her friends she would be late for the local festivities in honor of the Confederate dead, because she had to collect her pay at the local pencil factory in Atlanta. They watched her go off, and she was never seen alive again except by her murderer. Mary was violated and killed at the pencil factory. There is no doubt about that. But who killed her is the matter of controversy.
To this day, if one removes any feelings regarding bigotry and looks at the facts, there is a strong case that she may have been murdered by the manager of the factory - a fellow named Leo Frank who was from the North (from Brooklyn) and was Jewish. Those were two strikes against Frank. However, the bigotry colored the investigation and the local news coverage of the crime. This was due to a leading Georgian Democratic (and ex-populist) politician named Thomas Watson. Tom Watson was an anti-Semite, and an ambitious politician. He built up hostility against Frank (and the Jews in general). The local district attorney (a protégé of Watson) took his cues from the editor politician. So did the jury. And Frank was convicted.
One curious thing about the trial was that the District Attorney was willing to call as a witness the janitor at the pencil factory, one Jim Conley, as a witness. Conley was an African-American. It was very rare for a black man's testimony to be so useful in a prosecution in the "Jim Crow" south of 1913.
The rising anti-Semitism in the case helped the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in the south and mid-west in the late teens and 1920s (aided also by D. W. Griffith's movie THE BIRTH OF AN NATION). It also led to the creation of the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith. There was also a large, unofficial exodus of Jews from Georgia in this period.
Frank's defense managed to get the attention of Governor Slaton. The Governor promised a review of the case, and apparently did his own sleuthing. There is some controversy about this - most people think Slaton did a solid job finding the holes in the case against Frank's conviction. However, to this day the verdict is defended as just - the great grand-niece of Mary Phagan, a news reporter and writer named Mary Phagan, has written on the subject and has pointed out that Slaton may have had economic connections to Frank's employers. But Slaton reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.
Frank's new sentence was violently disliked and attacked, especially by Watson and the District Attorney. Frank was attacked in his prison, and badly wounded. Then, while being transported to another part of the state to a prison, Frank was seized by a mob and lynched in 1915. Photos of his lynching were sold throughout the South. Slaton was denied further public office, and forced to live outside Georgia for the rest of his life. Watson was eventually a U.S. Senator (and the father of Rural Free Delivery), before his death in 1922. The District Attorney was eventually Governor of Georgia.
The story was done in the films in the 1930s as THEY'LL NEVER FORGET, with Claude Rains as the Watson/D.A. character (amalgamated) and Lana Turner as Mary. A two part television version was done with Jack Lemmon as Slaton in 1989. It included one piece of information that only became known in the 1980s. A man named Alonzo Mann told the public that he saw Jim Conley carrying Mary's body the day of the murder, but Conley threatened to kill him if he said anything. This information was met with glee by supporters of Frank's innocence, but it did nothing of the sort. It was presented some seventy years after most of the witnesses (including Conley) were dead, and there was no way to test it in court. While it sounded true, it just was not the total smoking gun the Frank supporters hoped. However, the state of Georgia finally gave Frank a posthumous pardon - but not for being proved innocent by Mann. Rather for not being given full protection by the authorities of Georgia against the lynch mob in 1915.
In this PROFILES IN COURAGE episode, Slaton is paid by Walter Matthau. It's ironic that he and his closest friend and partner Jack Lemmon were the two actors who played the role on television. He gave a good accounting as the belabored Governor, trying to do what he thought was his duty, in the face of overwhelming public disapproval.
The case of Leo Frank still reverberates over ninety years after it's grotesquely horrible ending. On Confederate Memorial Day (April 26) 1913, a young, pretty looking girl named Mary Phagan told her friends she would be late for the local festivities in honor of the Confederate dead, because she had to collect her pay at the local pencil factory in Atlanta. They watched her go off, and she was never seen alive again except by her murderer. Mary was violated and killed at the pencil factory. There is no doubt about that. But who killed her is the matter of controversy.
To this day, if one removes any feelings regarding bigotry and looks at the facts, there is a strong case that she may have been murdered by the manager of the factory - a fellow named Leo Frank who was from the North (from Brooklyn) and was Jewish. Those were two strikes against Frank. However, the bigotry colored the investigation and the local news coverage of the crime. This was due to a leading Georgian Democratic (and ex-populist) politician named Thomas Watson. Tom Watson was an anti-Semite, and an ambitious politician. He built up hostility against Frank (and the Jews in general). The local district attorney (a protégé of Watson) took his cues from the editor politician. So did the jury. And Frank was convicted.
One curious thing about the trial was that the District Attorney was willing to call as a witness the janitor at the pencil factory, one Jim Conley, as a witness. Conley was an African-American. It was very rare for a black man's testimony to be so useful in a prosecution in the "Jim Crow" south of 1913.
The rising anti-Semitism in the case helped the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in the south and mid-west in the late teens and 1920s (aided also by D. W. Griffith's movie THE BIRTH OF AN NATION). It also led to the creation of the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith. There was also a large, unofficial exodus of Jews from Georgia in this period.
Frank's defense managed to get the attention of Governor Slaton. The Governor promised a review of the case, and apparently did his own sleuthing. There is some controversy about this - most people think Slaton did a solid job finding the holes in the case against Frank's conviction. However, to this day the verdict is defended as just - the great grand-niece of Mary Phagan, a news reporter and writer named Mary Phagan, has written on the subject and has pointed out that Slaton may have had economic connections to Frank's employers. But Slaton reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.
Frank's new sentence was violently disliked and attacked, especially by Watson and the District Attorney. Frank was attacked in his prison, and badly wounded. Then, while being transported to another part of the state to a prison, Frank was seized by a mob and lynched in 1915. Photos of his lynching were sold throughout the South. Slaton was denied further public office, and forced to live outside Georgia for the rest of his life. Watson was eventually a U.S. Senator (and the father of Rural Free Delivery), before his death in 1922. The District Attorney was eventually Governor of Georgia.
The story was done in the films in the 1930s as THEY'LL NEVER FORGET, with Claude Rains as the Watson/D.A. character (amalgamated) and Lana Turner as Mary. A two part television version was done with Jack Lemmon as Slaton in 1989. It included one piece of information that only became known in the 1980s. A man named Alonzo Mann told the public that he saw Jim Conley carrying Mary's body the day of the murder, but Conley threatened to kill him if he said anything. This information was met with glee by supporters of Frank's innocence, but it did nothing of the sort. It was presented some seventy years after most of the witnesses (including Conley) were dead, and there was no way to test it in court. While it sounded true, it just was not the total smoking gun the Frank supporters hoped. However, the state of Georgia finally gave Frank a posthumous pardon - but not for being proved innocent by Mann. Rather for not being given full protection by the authorities of Georgia against the lynch mob in 1915.
In this PROFILES IN COURAGE episode, Slaton is paid by Walter Matthau. It's ironic that he and his closest friend and partner Jack Lemmon were the two actors who played the role on television. He gave a good accounting as the belabored Governor, trying to do what he thought was his duty, in the face of overwhelming public disapproval.