In Old Kentucky (1935)

My Review

Will Rogers plays a horse trainer who is caught in a long-running feud between two families “In Old Kentucky.” Director George Marshall (“How the West Was Won” 1962) and screenwriters Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman, and Henry Johnson put together a weak comedy with mediocre production values and so-so writing.

The cast includes Will Rogers, Esther Dale, Dorothy Wilson, Russel Hardie, Charles Sellon, Louise Henry, Alan Dinehart, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson providing musical interludes with his patented dance numbers. Greyboy the Horse played Greyboy. “In Old Kentucky” was the ninth highest grossing movie of 1935 for the Fox Film Corporation, which merged with Twentieth Century Pictures later that year to form 20th Century Fox.

“In Old Kentucky” was the final film of beloved “National Comedian” Will Rogers (1879-1935), who perished in a plane crash in August, 1935, several months before the movie’s general release in November, 1935. His first film was Samuel Goldwyn’s “Laughing Bill Hyde” in 1918.