Which 1953 John Ford film remade Judge Priest material?

The 1953 John Ford film that remade Judge Priest material is The Sun Shines Bright.

The film draws on Irvin S. Cobb’s Judge Priest stories, including “The Sun Shines Bright,” “The Mob from Massac” and “The Lord Provides.” Ford had already adapted related material in his 1934 film Judge Priest, which starred Will Rogers.

Charles Winninger plays Judge William Pittman Priest in the later film, while Stepin Fetchit returns as Priest’s assistant, Poindexter. The plot combines election-day comedy and courtroom episodes with a serious racial conflict involving a threatened lynching.

The 1953 film is not a scene-for-scene remake. Ford reshaped the source material partly because the earlier film’s attempted-lynching sequence had been cut by 20th Century Fox. The later version made Priest’s confrontation with the mob a central moral and dramatic moment, and Ford later identified the film as one of his favorites.