Back Pay (1922)

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Director:

Frank Borzage

Writers:

Fannie Hurst (novel)
Frances Marion (writer)

Release Date:

8 January 1922 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Hester Bevins is a simple country girl who yearns for adventure. Though she has a handsome young man...

Plot Keywords:

Melodrama | Society | Based On Short Story | Based On Novel

Cast

Seena Owen	...	Hester Bevins
Matt Moore	...	Jerry Newcombe
J. Barney Sherry	...	Charles G. Wheeler
Ethel Duray	...	Kitty
Charles Craig	...	Speed
Jerry Sinclair	...	Thomas Craig

Runtime:

USA:70 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Cosmopolitan Productions

Trivia:

A print of this film survives in the Library of Congress.

Movie Connections:

Remade as Back Pay (1930)

Viewed at CINEFEST 2009... Having enjoyed great success with Humoresque in 1920, director Frank Borzage tackled yet another Fannie Hurst tear-jerker less than a year later.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Back Pay stars the elegant Seena Owen as country girl Hester Blevins. Although in love with Jerry Newcombe (Matt Moore), a delivery boy, Hester cannot bring herself to settle down for life in the humdrum town in which they live. She escapes her humdrum small town in favor of the excitement of the big city. In New York she falls in with a fast set, headed by Charles G. Wheeler, a wealthy businessman, and she learns the ways of the city from her companions, Kitty and "Speed." Years later Hester learns that Jerry has been seriously wounded in the war in France, and finding him blinded and with only a few weeks to live, she decides to make his remaining days happy. She brings the boy to New York and marries him despite protestations from her new "fast" crowd. Spoilers: After Jerry dies, Hester has visions of the boy calling her from her surroundings, and consequently she leaves her life of luxury with Wheeler, gets a job, rents a furnished room, and finds comfort in her new life. It was remade nine years later starring the "Orchid Lady," Corinne Griffith.

Director Frank Borzage was an Academy Award-winning American film director famed for his mystical romanticism from 7th Heaven (1927) to Mortal Storm (1940). Borzage's trademark was intense identification with the feelings of young lovers in the face of adversity, love in his films triumphing over such trials as war. Seena Owen was considered by some silent film cinematographers as a natural beauty. She started her film career at Kalem Studios, then later she appeared as Princess Beloved in Griffith's Intolerance (1916). On the set of this picture she met her future husband, actor George Walsh. Twelve years later she played Queen Regina, in Von Stroheim's Queen Kelly. When talkies revealed a flat voice, Seena Owen quit acting to become a screenwriter eventually co-writing two of Dorothy Lamour's biggest hits, Aloma of the South Seas (1941) and Rainbow Island (1941). She was also one of the many Hollywood socialites on board the yacht of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst during the mysterious death of movie producer 'Thomas Ince'. Novelist Fannie Hurst is best remembered today for the films Back Street & Imitation of Life. Frances Marion the most renowned female screenwriter of the 20th century, and one of the most respected scripters of any gender helped along the careers of Mary Pickford and Marion Davies before winning Oscars for writing The Big House (1930) and The Champ (1931). Matt Moore, although not as famous as his brothers Owen and Tom did have a career that stretched from Traffic In Souls (1913) to An Affair To Remember (1957).