Caroline (Marjorie Weaver), a singer from Kentucky who has been waiting to audition, learns about the plan and tells her friends, the out-of-work Ritz Brothers. The four decide to go to Coma, KY, and pretend to be authentic hillbillies in order to get the job. In Coma, they live in a shack, where they learn that their landlords are involved in a feud with the Hatfields (John Carradine, Francis Ford, Mary Treen and Slim Summerville), who become their enemies. Jerry and Gus arrive in Coma and see Caroline and the Brothers, now disguised as hillbillies, perform. They win the audition and go back to New York to perform on Jerry's show. But things go awry when Spats Swanson (Eddie Collins) blackmails Caroline and the Brothers for $300 because he knows their true identity.
Directed by David Butler and written by M.M. Musselman and Art Arthur, from an original story by Musselman and Jack Lait, Jr., Kentucky Moonshine went into production January 17 through March 26, 1938, under the working title of Moonshine Over Kentucky . The origins of the story came into dispute when Ned Washington, Howard J. Greene and Sam B. Stept sued Fox for a million dollars in a plagiarism claim that the studio had actually based the film on their unproduced script, Nitwit's Holiday. The studio's defense, according to the Fox legal files, were documents showing that in 1937, Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck had requested that producer Kenneth Macgowan create a hillbilly story for Fox contract players Jack Haley, Joan Davis and Wally Vernon. Art Arthur (whose name appears on the final script) and Curtis Kenyon were given the job. Arthur had based his ideas on a real-life visit to a nightclub in New York a few years previously to see a hillbilly act, only to have the club's owner later tell him that the supposed hillbillies were really from Brooklyn. In addition, writer Ralph Spence had written and directed a two-reel short about a Broadway radio station that broadcast "Broadway Hillbillies." Dialect comedian El Brendel, the star of that short, shared the script with director David Butler shortly before Kentucky Moonshine went into production. The lawsuit was later settled for $300.
Kentucky Moonshine was shot in black and white but, according to the American Film Institute, reels three and four were tinted in post-production in sepia and blue. This technique had been used since the earliest days of motion pictures when film stock was dyed various shades to represent day or night. While full-color motion picture film did exist in 1938, three-strip Technicolor was still relatively new and very expensive, so Fox could not have been expected to use Technicolor for a comedy.
The film received good reviews when it was released on May 20, 1938. Motion Picture Reviews noted that "Moviegoers who enjoy the exuberant clowning of the Ritz Brothers will find bits of hilarious entertainment in this picture. [...] Like most pictures starring specialized entertainment, this one has its dull moments and seems too long for what it has to offer, but it reserves its cleverest sequence for the end, and the audience comes away laughing."
By Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
https://catalog.afi.com/
The Internet Movie Database
"Kentucky Moonshine" The Motion Picture Herald June 1938
