The Sun Shines Bright is a 1953 American comedy-drama Western film directed by John Ford, based on material taken from a series of Irvin S. Cobb "Judge Priest" short stories featured in The Saturday Evening Post in the 1910s, specifically "The Sun Shines Bright", "The Mob from Massac", and "The Lord Provides".

Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was an American author, humorist, editor and columnist from Paducah, Kentucky, who relocated to New York in 1904, living there for the remainder of his life. He wrote for the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, as the highest paid staff reporter in the United States.