My Old Kentucky Home
Cast & Crew
Lambert Hillyer
Evelyn Venable
Grant Richards
Clara Blandick
Bernadene Hayes
J. Farrell Macdonald
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Scipio Africanus, a black servant in the Kentucky home of the Blairs, predicts misery will come to the house. Lisbeth Calvert, childhood sweetheart of her cousin, Larry Blair, prepares to marry him. The night of their engagement party in New York, Larry's friend Gail, a singer from the North, reveals to Larry that she's in love with him, then tries to commit suicide with acid, but Larry stops her and acid is splashed in his eyes. When the papers scandalize Larry's association with Gail, Lisbeth breaks her engagement with him. Julia "Granny" Blair, the family matriarch, intervenes to reunite the couple by planning the Blairstown centennial a year early to get Larry out of New York. Gail's doctor then tells her that Larry is slowly losing his sight and will never regain it. Meanwhile, Lisbeth and Larry are reconciled and she gives him a poem by nineteenth century English Romantic poet John Keats which expresses her feelings, but he is unable to read it and realizes he is going blind. A short time later, he asks Gail to join him in Blairstown in order to help him keep his blindness from Lisbeth. Gail arrives with her brother Trent, who is after the Blair fortune, and he seduces Lisbeth's impressionable younger sister, Lucy Belle. Although Gail wants to tell Lisbeth the truth about her motives for joining Larry in Blairstown, he does not want Lisbeth to have to take care of him all his life and hopes to let her down easy by making her believe he loves Gail. During the centennial radio broadcast, as Blairstown's black choir performs, Lucy Belle nearly elopes with Trent, but the town mayor, Jim Hopkins, who has loved Granny Blair for years, refuses to marry them. Gail confesses the truth to Lisbeth and she and Larry are reconciled. Larry's eyesight then starts to return.
Director
Lambert Hillyer
Cast
Evelyn Venable
Grant Richards
Clara Blandick
Bernadene Hayes
J. Farrell Macdonald
Margaret Marquis
Cornelius Keefe
Kitty Mchugh
Raquel Davido
Paul White
Mildred Gover
The Hall Johnson Choir
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
News items in Film Daily and Hollywood Reporter noted that Monogram had intended to make the picture in late 1935 or early 1936. One news item stated that Victor Schertzinger would score the picture, which was to star Marion Talley and be directed by Aubrey Scotto. Other news items from 1935 and 1936 variously mentioned Tristram Tupper, Walton T. Farrar, Hazel Jamieson and Herman Boxer as screenwriters and I. E. Chadwick as producer. None of these persons were credited on screen or in reviews, however, and the extent of their participation in the completed film has not been determined. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, Grant Richards was borrowed from Paramount for the role of Larry Blair. The Hall Johnson Choir, a well known choral group composed of black singers, was singled out for praise in reviews for their renditions of several Stephen Foster melodies.
