Home truths… Back Pay (1922), with Andrew Earle Simpson, Undercrank Productions DVD

 

The story of Hester Bevins is as old as sin, but sin is just a little bit younger than love, and often the two are interchangeable…

This film is about karma but in terms of its survival, it’s hardly been instant given that we can only now rewatch it a century after its release. Any film directed by Frank Borzage you’d expect to be not only commercially viable but also available and yet it took a Kickstarter campaign from composer Andrew Earle Simpson, supported by Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions to produce the DVD I now hold in my hand (typing with my right!). My name is on the credits along with hundreds of others world-wide who have pitched in on this one and it feels good to be a small part of preserving these films not just in digital formats but also in memory and wider study.

The only copies of Back Pay and its companion on this project, Borzage’s The Valley of Silent Men (1922) are held as part of the Marion Davies collection in the Library of Congress, and Back Pay is presented from a new 2K scan of the LOC’s 35mm acetate duplicate negative, printed from the sole surviving 35mm nitrate print.  It includes the film’s original tinting scheme and looks fabulous, especially as it also includes Grace Waller’s original art titles and “art” is what they are with illustrations enhancing the witty script from the great Frances Marion, who adapted from the short story of the same name by Fannie Hurst.

It’s 1922 and there’s still plenty of women involved in Hollywood and Fanny Hurst was arguably the most popular writer in America with a stonking twenty nine films based on her stories. Hurst chronicled the lives of working class urban lives and was, according to Grace Paley in The Stories of Fannie Hurst*, “…a pioneer in writing about working women, from maids to secretaries to garment workers, from prostitutes to artists,” weaving these together into “… captivating, deeply human stories that capture her characters’ struggles, triumphs, conflicts, and loves.”

Seena Owen

You can see the huge cinema going everywoman audience relating to this and especially Back Pay, which ponders the right of women to hold ambition in ways reflective of post-War equality – in the US as in the UK – women’s role in the war effort had earned them more respect and recognition. It’s easy, but remiss, to overlook this context in viewing what is a melodrama and also to take the proximity of the Great War for granted; four years on, countries were still full of physically and mentally damaged veterans who had lost their place in a society that didn’t always understand their sacrifice. In this way Back Pay reminds me a little of Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919), which dealt with the social and welfare aftermath of the conflict.

Hester Bevins had spent her life in Demopolis, one of those small, changeless towns which stand like sentinels beyond the outer gates of New York.

 

Here we start with a small town called Demopolis in which young Hester (Seena Owen) is gradually suffocating, every train heading away breaking her vaguely ambitious heart just a little bit more and with all around her seemingly satisfied with their lot. “She was filled with a passion for excitement and luxury – and certainly neither of these could be found in the boarding house of Mrs Elmira Simmons…” with every mealtime a thudding reminder of the past, present and potential future if she stayed.

Her one bright spark is boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who loves her even more deeply than he loves the town and his job at the General Store. He’s scrimping and saving but $150 a month isn’t going to buy Hester the lifestyle she wants as she tells him they’re simply too poor to marry.  Borzage and his cameraman Chester A Lyons, capture some idyllic scenes of country life, especially the town’s annual picnic with egg and spoon plus sack races, dancing and music; it’s like something from a Sjostrom outdoor adventure with some craggy-faced locals providing realist flavour.

Hester and Jerry make their way for some peace and quiet and have their faithful disconnection as he proposes and she smiles briefly before declining as they talk into the night. She sings a partially finished song for them and tells him she will finish it later… only much later, as she decides she must find herself in New York. Hester’s train leaves Jerry abandoned as Frances Marion writes, two decades before Cole Porter, that to say goodbye is to die a little…

To New York City and a jump five years ahead, years of struggle… in which old beliefs and high ideals went one by one… Until luxury claimed her – on its own terms. Hester’s journey is only thus hinted at but she is now living in a fine appartement maintained by her wealthy boyfriend, the presumably married, and certainly much older, Charles G. Wheeler of Wall Street (J. Barney Sherry). She has other friends with names such as Kitty (Ethel Duray) and Speed (Charles Craig) and life is one long, well-dressed, well-watered, party with jazz music on tap and plenty of joie de vivre. Hester has a Rolls from Charles but now wants a $22,000 fur coat from her sugar financier, and she’ll get it too by making him have to out-compete friend Speed’s generosity.

 

The wages of sin is death. If sin has any wages, some of us are going to collect a lot of back pay!

On a weekend away, she asks to get dropped off in the old town and, spotting Jerry, reconnects with the man who has never stopped loving, or waiting, for her. Jerry is now on $200 a month but, as Hester says, that wouldn’t even cover her mink stole. Hester still loves Jerry but she loves the high life more… The story moves on and, as the parties continue, Hester in platinum gown dancing on a chair, we see Jerry fighting in Europe, and calling out Hester’s name as the bombs fall in No Man’s Land. The film is about to pivot as Hester reads of Jerry’s heroism and his return, injured from the front… everything she knows is about to be challenged by the conflicting realities of love, war and commerce.

I love a good location

 

It's a measured film, slow by modern standards but the narrative doesn’t feel forced from Borzage who is more than willing to let his talented cast pull the viewer along. In this so much rests on the almost ever-present Seena Owen whom I have not seen before but is so good here. I must seek out more of her work.

 

The new score from Andrew Earle Simpson is also very enjoyable, lyrical and rich in tone it provides the sincerest of accompaniments and elevates the whole experience; I’d love to hear it live. Until then, we have this excellent release from Undercrank which in addition to a 4k restoration of The Valley of Silent Men** also includes a video essay on Borzage at Cosmopolitan, Randolph Heart’s company for which he made these films. The sets also have informative Film Facts that run along the intertitles to explain the background to the films.

 

The set is being generally released in February/March 2023 and you can order direct from Undercrank right here.

 

* The Stories of Fannie Hurst, (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004) Fannie Hurst, edited by Susan Koppelman and with and introduction from Grace Paley.

** This film does raise the question of whether Ben Model can see Steve Massa’s house from his roof… if there is a Valley of Silent Men, these two surely live in it, along with Mr Simpson!