MovieChat Forums > Oklahoma! (1956) Discussion > Anyone else sympathize with Jud?

Anyone else sympathize with Jud?


I hate how all the plot descriptions call Jud "evil" and a "villain"--I think he's more of a tragic character. All he wants is a girl to share his lonely life with, and until the end when he gets desperate, he seems like a nice guy. Laurey rejects him only because he's an unsophisticated hired hand--something that's not his fault. What do you guys think?

Of course, this may be because I'm a huge Phantom of the Opera fan, and am seeing a few parallels between the Jud/Laurey/Curly and Phantom/Christine/Raoul love triangles...anyone else notice this?

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Nice guy? It is strongly suggested he burned a family to death before going to work for Aunt Eller!

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He tries to kill Curly with the Little Wonder. He tries to burn Curly and Laurey to death. Pore Jud, indeed.

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Jud is indeed a tragic/sad figure. He did NOT kill that other family, but just mentions the story to Curly as an example of how he could "get even" like that other guy. One interesting thing is that Rod Steiger originated the role of "Marty" the overweight unattractive guy who couldn't get married, in the TV play that eventually became a film and got an Oscar for Ernest Borgnine. The author, Paddy Chayefsky, had written a somewhat autobiographical tale of what it's like to be unattractive in a world that values looks. During rehearsals, Chayefsky wrote that he would see Steiger actually crying after scenes; Steiger was clearly very involved in his role, and knew what it meant not to be good looking. He had a brilliant career in Hollywood, albeit in carefully selected roles. And Chayefsky was the brilliant screenwriter, who won his Oscar for Network, and wrote many other great screenplays. Just a note to those who commented about Jud.

Allen Roth
"I look up, I look down..."

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There's nothing in the play or screenplay that says Jud DIDN'T set fire to the Bartlett farm, either. The implication is there by the look on Jud's face when he realizes his slip. He also knows too many details. And the expression when he tells about the Bartlett girl in the hayloft with the other fellow- how did Jud know so much? In the nightmare part of Laurey's dream there's even the distant image of a burning farmhouse on the backdrop. Is it the Bartlett farm? Could it happen to her? Not to mention those high-flaming light fixtures. Even Laurey's dream tells us of her own suspicions about Jud. The fact that he tries to burn Curly and Laurey to death the night of their wedding should put to rest the question of who burned the Bartlett farm.

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Nice guy? It is strongly suggested he burned a family to death before going to work for Aunt Eller!
by - rorysa on Tue May 30 2006 15:45:39
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I love how people employ sophistry like the above to eradicate ambiguity and pretend morality is black and white.

Jud is the sole character in the piece severed from family structure. He has no parents, no friends, and no social support. All the characters treat him like he's something less than human, a pariah, a mongrel. Every society devises the means of acceptance, but also of exclusion. Jud is thoroughly excluded. The alpha male in the piece comes to visit him only to see if he can persuade him to kill himself. But that's quite alright with the viewer above.

At the pie auction the whole of OK society is in Curly's corner. Noone misses a chance to rattle Jud's cage.

And simple-minded viewers are surprised when Jud demonstrates anti-social behavior; then offer to do the moral clean-up without having thought about the piece much at all, except to identify with the protagonists.

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Jud Fry is the backbone of this three-person household, the two women are utterly dependent on him. ("He jus' about runs the farm by hisself! Two women couldn't do it" says Aunt Eller.)

So the two women live the high life in the nice house, while Jud gets to sleep in the smoke-house for his troubles and get treated like dirt. It's warped.

At the pie auction the whole of OK society is in Curly's corner. Noone misses a chance to rattle Jud's cage.

Exactly, and when Curly wins, Aunt Eller is so overjoyed she breaks the gavel, and the crowd bursts into cheers. They've defeated the enemy!

Nice bit of public humiliation for Jud there. And why? Nobody (yet) knows what a jerk he was in the carriage. To our knowledge, nobody but Curly connects him to the Bartlett fire (and it's not even certain he IS connected). He's obviously never been a threat -- Aunt Eller trusts him alone with Laurey, and isn't even worried when they don't show up.

Nasty bunch of people.

This really is one of my all-time favorite movies (believe it or not). But I've always had a hard time with this aspect of it.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know how intellectually superior you because you told us. Folks who call others simple-minded, as you did, apparently are more simple minded than their verbal targets.

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I love how people employ sophistry like the above to eradicate ambiguity and pretend morality is black and white.
So in other words, you don't actually know what sophistry means. Good to know.

It's not sophistry to form an interpretation of a work - particularly when that interpretation does not knowingly mislead or omit certain important information. You may not agree with that interpretation, but one of the things that makes art interesting is that (get this!) different people can have different but equally valid responses to the same work.

Yes, there are ambiguities involved with Jud's character, but to call someone a sophist for suggesting that he's not, in fact, a "nice guy" only shows your own ignorance of the art of argumentation, of art, and of the meanings of the words you use.

But then again, judging by the pompous tone of your profile, I get the impression that you're not someone over-accustomed to thinking in the first place. Rather, you're someone who has spent way too much time convincing yourself that you're smarter and more complex than everyone else around you. Unfortunately for you, your words betray you - anyone who writes sentences as wrongheaded and thoughtless (and yet hilariously, undeservedly condescending) as those that introduce your profile is someone who clearly has not spent much time interacting with people or learning how to distinguish personal feelings from objective observations.

Also, a question brought about by reading your profile: Were you sad when your soul died? Or did you view it as a blessed release from the chains that bind all us mere mortals? Your point about the ubiquity of meaningless "thumbs up/thumbs down" criticism is valid - but the introductory sentences serve only as one of the clearest possible expressions of your own inadequacies.

I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here

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Totally agree. And if I might add, Laurey just uses Jud to get back at Curly, and when Jud calls her out on that point after the auction, she fires him. Gotta keep those lesser folk down, right?-Jeeze, they all push him to desperate acts because they can, and they create his bitterness, which he then acts upon because he begins to believe himself to be that mongrel they have told him he is.

I wish they had not left out, "Lonely Room". I have played this show recently, and after seeing both the movie, and listening from the pit, Jud truly is the moral center for me. His story changed my point of view of every character of the show. It certainly makes my perspective of them more realistic.

Thanks for your thoughts- very on point.

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I feel sorry for Jud in that Laurie is using him to make Curley jealous, but when he's spying on her through the window...too creepy.

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I have seen this film many times since I was a child, and I have always thought it was obvious he burned the other family.

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And "Lonely Room" spells out JUST how dark and fearful those dimensions are. That song was not written for the audience to sympathize with Jud, but to understand him and be scared to death by him. Understanding who a character is and sympathizing with him are not the same thing. We can be given a sympathetic view of Hitler, but he's still Hitler.

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I feel sorry for him to an extent but I believe he could easily have become a serial rapist with the unsavoury feelings he had for women.

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I would say that I sympathize with Jud. At first he started out as a very complex character, the film makers kind of cheated by making him out to be a murderer, this easily turned the audience against him.

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He was obviously a psycho who brooded too much.Felt some sympathy when Laurey used him to make Curly jealous-I believe he did love her in his way.I've been in his position-although I've never killed anybody!

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In "Lonely Room" he sings about going out and getting a bride, not a victim. He ids creepy and dangerous, but like a dog that has been abused

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I am writing this before reading other responses, so forgive me if I repeat what others have already written. I have always felt sympathy for Jud because he is clearly a sick man; however, he had to die, as he was a dangerous man. His murder of the entire Bartlett family is reason enough. Rod Steiger's performance in this movie adds a level to this movie that lifts it to a top-ten place in my greatest films (not just musicals!).

I feel that Zinneman and Rodgers and Hammerstein made the very best musical film ever based on a Broadway play, period

"I love corn!"

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yes, i sympathies with him...lonely resentful ,misunderstood man. i get the phantom of the opera parallels too!

Lawyer:You sir are a moron
Homer:A Mormon,but I'm from earth!

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Perhaps the Phantom and Jud are parallel characters, but I wouldn't say that the love triangles are parallel at all. Christine does not use the Phantom to make Raoul jealous. Curly is not the equivalent of the pansy Raoul. I feel like you root for Curly/Laurey a whole lot more than Christine/Raoul, so I would say that the Phantom is a more sympathetic character than Jud.

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I feel sorry for Rod Steiger. He couldn't get either Lara or Laurey.

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yes, i sympathies with him...lonely resentful ,misunderstood man.

i do feel bad for him, he obviously loved Laurie but she saw him as a lowly hired hand, the stuck up b**ch! He was just desperate for love. :(

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It's interesting that the villain of "Oklahoma" and the hero of "Carousel" are rather similar. They are crude, rough guys, defensive toward their station in life, obbsessed with the heroine. They are scorned by society and more comfortable with the riff-raff that exists on its under side. Both die by falling on knives. Why is one "bad" and the other "good"?

I think it's the dark side of Jud's personality that makes him a villain. He hates the world and is prone toward violence. I just took another look at the scene in the smokehouse and am not sure that he is the one who burned the Bartlett farm, (although he seems to know a lot about it: the filmmakers wisely leave the question to the audience). But he certainly seems impressed that the perpetraitor of that crime was courageous and clever enough to find an outlet for his hatred. Later he tries to injure Curley with the kaleidoscope and is willing to burn him and Laurie on the haystack. It's the cynicism and hatred and the choices it causes him to make that make him a misudnerstood villain, rather than a misunderstood hero.

Billy doesn't hate anybody. He's not at war with the world- just himself. He is full of love but has no idea how to express it. He is capable of great tenderness but it seems unmanly. His wife is able to see those qualities in him but nobody else is. To the rest of the world he's not much better than Jud Fry, (whose name betrays his fate). But Billy's up there in heaven, redeemed by the fact that he was full of love, rather than hate.

That's the difference between them.

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Sorry, Jud fry is not a lonely, misunderstood guy.

He seems to know about more than one murder including
the family burned to death mentioned above.

He wants to buy something--I've forgotten what
it's called--to try to kill Curly and is only
foiled by Aunt Eller.

And then he tries to kill Laurie and Curley by
using coal oil to set the haystack on fire and
burn them to death, too.

The guy is a heinous, mean villain.

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Wow. I just got it. Jud Fry? Yes, good pun. But a PERFECTLY beautiful part for Mr. Steiger. He loved mean.

I had always thought OKLAHOMA was an uplifting, spirited Broadway musical. This is a dark piece. Interesting, but very different than expected.

Sweeney Todd, of course, is also very dark, but I knew to expect that. That one (esp. the movie with Depp) is a masterpiece. Now, let's compare the two characters, Benjamin Barker and Jud Fry. Two men shaped by circumstance....

I find it fascinating that popular musicals can contain so much darkness.





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Popular musicals are not always sweet and light (West Side Story, South Pacific, Cabaret to think of several off the top of my head). People die, there is unhappiness, unpleasant subject matter...like life. This one was based on the play, "Green Grow the Lilacs" which had the same basic unhappy story (some characters alittle different). Good actors in that original production...Franchot Tone and Lee Strasberg to name two.
Do I sympathize with Jud? He is a suspected (and I believe true) murder, he tries to kill Curley, he threatens Laurie that she is never going to be rid of him (sounds like a stalker to me), and tries to kill both of them.....he is a psychotic nut job.

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he threatens Laurie that she is never going to be rid of him (sounds like a stalker to me), and tries to kill both of them.....he is a psychotic nut job


I agree that he is a psychotic nut job and is a stalker, (the wedding scene he was looking through the window) and he seems to be obsessed with her.

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The original Rogers and Hammerstein play is at fault for the way it handles the Judd character, especially the way they so hastily dispatch off his death at the end.

I think that if Zinnemann had had more control over the screenplay he would have tried to give Judd's death a little more emotional weight for the rest of the characters. It's just hard for me to believe people would so merrily push on with life after somebody as tormented like that has jut died.

"What I don't understand is how we're going to stay alive this winter."

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The strange thing is that if he was guilty of that crime with the family why wasn't he brought to trial like Curly who was obviously defending himself.

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