# Fury (1936 film)
**Fury** is a 1936 American drama directed by [Fritz Lang](https://www.edgepedia.org/fritz-lang), his first film made in the United States, in which an innocent drifter, [Joe Wilson](https://www.edgepedia.org/joe-wilson) ([Spencer Tracy](https://www.edgepedia.org/spencer-tracy)), is jailed on suspicion of kidnapping and nearly killed when a lynch mob burns down the jail; surviving in secret, he seeks revenge on the mob through a murder trial.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna, it is considered by many Lang's best American film and a landmark of social-conscience filmmaking.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) • [3](https://moviesanywhere.com/movie/fury-1936)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / producer | Fritz Lang (his first American film); produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, his first film as an M-G-M producer[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) |
| Release | 5 June 1936; production ran 20 February to 25 April 1936[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) |
| Writers | Screenplay by Bartlett Cormack and Fritz Lang, from the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) |
| Principal cast | Spencer Tracy (Joe Wilson), Sylvia Sidney (Katherine Grant), Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) |
| Real-life basis | The 1933 lynching in San Jose, California, of two kidnappers, Thomas Harold Thurmond and John Maurice Holmes[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) |
| Recognition | National Film Registry; Oscar nomination for Best Story; three New York Film Critics Circle nominations including Best Film[4](https://icheckmovies.com/movies/fury/) • [5](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film668444.html) |
| Critical standing | 95% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (19 reviews); The New York Times called it the finest dramatic film of 1936[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1035061-fury) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Joe Wilson, a hardworking man running a gas station with his brothers Charlie and Tom, is saving to marry Katherine Grant, who has moved away to earn money of her own.[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027652/plotsummary/) Traveling to see her, he stops in a small town and is arrested on flimsy circumstantial evidence for the kidnapping of a child, a crime that has been making headlines.[8](https://letterboxd.com/afisilver/film/fury/) • [9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf) Word spreads through the town's barrooms, grocery stores, and kitchens, and a mob gathers outside the jail demanding that Sheriff Hummel hand him over.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) Rebuffed, the mob breaks in and sets the building ablaze with Joe inside; [Katherine](https://www.edgepedia.org/katherine), arriving in town, watches in horror.[8](https://letterboxd.com/afisilver/film/fury/)
Joe narrowly escapes the fire but is presumed dead. When his attackers are not brought to justice, he resurfaces and, with the help of his brothers, uses newsreel footage of the fire to put more than twenty citizens on trial for his murder.[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1035061-fury) • [8](https://letterboxd.com/afisilver/film/fury/) Katherine, suspecting he survived, tries to dissuade him from the vengeful plan.[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1035061-fury) Under the [Hays Code](https://www.edgepedia.org/hays-code), then in strict enforcement, the film had to end a certain way: Joe was only pretending to be dead, so the mob members he took to court must be acquitted, and the film closes with a reconciliation between Joe and Katherine.[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf)
## Production
Lang, a German émigré who had fled [Nazi Germany](https://www.edgepedia.org/nazi-germany), arrived in the United States in June 1934 and signed with M-G-M in the autumn of that year.[10](https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3426/1/WRAP_Bruzzi_Imperfect_Justice.pdf) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) After a year of unrealized projects, he was handed a four-page outline titled "Mob Rule" and told to develop it into a script with writer Bartlett Cormack.[11](https://classicfilmreview.com/crowd-control/) Lang, whose English was still weak, drew on his habit of collecting newspaper clippings, using coverage of the San Jose lynching case for the script.[11](https://classicfilmreview.com/crowd-control/) Working titles included "Mob Rule" and "The Mob"; an M-G-M purchase of an unrelated 1932 short story titled "Fury" from Edmund Goulding is not connected to this film.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY)
**Censorship shaped the film.** The Production Code office informed M-G-M that the film could not deal with racial prejudice, criticize Southern law enforcement officials, or be a "travesty of justice" story.[12](https://journals.ku.edu/jdtc/article/download/1827/1790/2154) Lang was forbidden to use black actors even in minor roles, though he initially shot scenes featuring peripheral black characters to suggest lynching as a threat to black Americans; a scene of a black laundress singing a song of freedom and a scene of Southern blacks responding to a radio speech condemning lynching were both cut at the studio's behest.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) [Sylvia Sidney](https://www.edgepedia.org/sylvia-sidney)'s casting was a condition Lang stipulated before signing his M-G-M contract, and she took a pay cut to work with him; she was influential in helping Lang get his start in Hollywood.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) • [9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf)
The crew included cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, editor Frank Sullivan, art director [Cedric Gibbons](https://www.edgepedia.org/cedric-gibbons), and composer Franz Waxman.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) George Walcott replaced Eric Linden in the role of Tom Wilson when Linden fell ill during production.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY) The dog Terry, who plays Rainbow, went on to play [Toto](https://www.edgepedia.org/toto-oz) in *The Wizard of Oz* (1939).[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf)
## Themes and reception
The film is a scathing depiction of mob violence and of justice easily led astray.[8](https://letterboxd.com/afisilver/film/fury/) Mob violence was already familiar to viewers of Lang's German films, *Dr. Mabuse the Gambler*, *Metropolis*, and *M*, all of which feature violent crowds; one commentary describes *Fury* as inverting *M*, presenting an individual threatened by a deviant social order rather than a social order threatened by a deviant individual.[13](https://static-cdn.edit.site/users-files/5841dec7f377759f3fd768d38287afde/fury-1936.pdf?dl=1) Lang said *Fury* was his favorite of his American films and that it reminded him of *M*.[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf)
Scholarship has emphasized the film's treatment of the trial form. Stella Bruzzi, Professor of Film and Television Studies at the [University of Warwick](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-warwick), argues that in Lang's cinema the law is not a fixed, trustworthy institution but one that is gullible and open to abuse, and that *Fury* offers a complex view of justice only partially resolved by its abrupt, intentionally unconvincing happy ending.[10](https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3426/1/WRAP_Bruzzi_Imperfect_Justice.pdf) The film's representation of justice ironically hinges on chance and coincidence, and Joe's character shifts from a trusting everyman to a vengeful figure before reverting.[10](https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3426/1/WRAP_Bruzzi_Imperfect_Justice.pdf)
Contemporary and later critics ranked it highly. Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times called it "a mature, sober and penetrating investigation of a national blight"; [Graham Greene](https://www.edgepedia.org/graham-greene), writing in [The Spectator](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spectator), called it "the only film I know to which I have wanted to attach the epithet of 'great.'"[5](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film668444.html) • [3](https://moviesanywhere.com/movie/fury-1936) NAACP secretary Walter White wrote to Lang after viewing it, "More than I have ever seen it before has the medium of the motion picture been used to bring home to America what mob violence means."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY)
**Commercially the film underperformed.** After squabbling between Lang and MGM head [Louis B. Mayer](https://www.edgepedia.org/louis-b-mayer), who had taken a dislike to the director, MGM essentially buried the film on release, but word of its quality spread and it became a success with art-house moviegoers and critics.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury) The Library of Congress essay states it received great reviews but did poorly at the box office; Cinegraph records a budget of $604,000 against revenue of $1.3 million.[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf) • [14](https://cinegraph.org/movies/fury-1936) It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story and received three New York Film Critics Circle nominations, including Best Film.[5](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film668444.html)
## Legacy
*Fury* launched the American phase of Lang's career and was the first of a loosely grouped trio of social-criticism films with Sylvia Sidney, alongside *You Only Live Once* (1937) and *You and Me* (1938).[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf) • [10](https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3426/1/WRAP_Bruzzi_Imperfect_Justice.pdf) For Spencer Tracy, whose performance traces Joe's change from an innocent, likable man into an embittered man thirsty for revenge, the film marked a turning point in his career, though he never worked with Lang again.[9](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf) The film was later selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry, and it appears on canonical lists including IMDb's Film-Noir Top 50 (#26) and iCheckMovies' 1930s Top 100 (#24).[4](https://icheckmovies.com/movies/fury/)
## References
1. [Fury (1936), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/4094-FURY)
2. [Felicia Feaster, "Fury," Turner Classic Movies article (2003)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/25825/fury)
3. [Fury, Movies Anywhere](https://moviesanywhere.com/movie/fury-1936)
4. [Fury (1936), iCheckMovies](https://icheckmovies.com/movies/fury/)
5. [Fury (1936), FilmAffinity](https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film668444.html)
6. [Fury, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1035061-fury)
7. [Fury (1936) plot summary, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027652/plotsummary/)
8. [AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center review of Fury, Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/afisilver/film/fury/)
9. [Raquel Stecher, National Film Preservation Board essay on Fury, Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/fury.pdf)
10. [Stella Bruzzi, "Imperfect Justice: Fritz Lang's Fury (1936) and Cinema's Use of the Trial Form," Law and Humanities 4.1 (2010)](https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3426/1/WRAP_Bruzzi_Imperfect_Justice.pdf)
11. [David English, "Crowd Control," Classic Film Review (2025)](https://classicfilmreview.com/crowd-control/)
12. [Journal of Film and Digital Media article on Fury and censorship, University of Kansas](https://journals.ku.edu/jdtc/article/download/1827/1790/2154)
13. [Fury (1936) themes notes](https://static-cdn.edit.site/users-files/5841dec7f377759f3fd768d38287afde/fury-1936.pdf?dl=1)
14. [Fury (1936), Cinegraph](https://cinegraph.org/movies/fury-1936)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1940s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license