Back Pay
About Back Pay
Hester Bevins is a salesclerk in a small-town department store and will not marry bookkeeper Gerald Smith. She leaves for New York with traveling salesman Al Bloom and becomes the kept woman of Charles Wheeler. Friends take her on a motor trip to Hot Springs, near home. Gerald, thinking she is single and working in the city, proposes again. She says it is impossible. He enlists. Gas blinds him and ruins his lungs. Told he is dying, she asks Wheeler’s leave to marry him and nurses him. He dies in her arms. She drops Wheeler’s money and goes back to ordinary work.
Cast & crew
More about Back Pay
William A. Seiter directed and produced with Walter Morosco. Francis Edward Faragoh wrote the screenplay from Fannie Hurst’s short story in Cosmopolitan, November 1919. Hurst’s play of the same name opened on Broadway on 30 August 1921. Shooting began 19 November 1929. First National, a Warner subsidiary, released it in the United States on 1 June 1930, after a New York opening on 30 May. Copyright LP1351, 9 June 1930. It runs 57 minutes. John F. Seitz photographed. Ray Curtiss edited. Leo F. Forbstein conducted the Vitaphone orchestra. Cecil Copping and Alois Reiser wrote music. Corinne Griffith sings Jerome Kern’s “They Didn’t Believe Me.” It is a remake of Frank Borzage’s 1922 silent Back Pay. Corinne Griffith is Hester. Grant Withers is Gerald. Montagu Love is Charles Wheeler. Hallam Cooley is Al Bloom.
Themes
Making
Seiter’s pre-Code version keeps Hurst’s shape: the town she leaves, the man who keeps her, and the gassed soldier she marries for the time he has left. The last choice is a job, not Wheeler’s apartment.
Look
John F. Seitz shot the small-town store, the New York rooms Wheeler pays for, and the sickroom where Gerald dies.
Music
Cecil Copping and Alois Reiser wrote the score. Leo F. Forbstein conducted the Vitaphone orchestra. Corinne Griffith sings Jerome Kern’s “They Didn’t Believe Me.”
Preservation
A 57-minute print survives.
Notes
- Vivien Oakland is Kitty. Geneva Mitchell is Babe. William Bailey is Ed.
- The 1922 film starred Seena Owen and Matt Moore for Cosmopolitan Productions.
- AFI notes that it has not been shown whether the 1930 script also used Hurst’s play or only the story.
- Griffith’s number is Kern’s “They Didn’t Believe Me.”
Scenes
- She turns down Gerald and leaves with Al Bloom.
- At Hot Springs he proposes again and she tells him it is impossible.
- Blind and gassed, he dies in her arms after the marriage.
- She gives up Wheeler and goes back to work.
Influenced by
- Back Pay (Fannie Hurst, 1919)
- Back Pay (1922 film)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Back Pay (1930).webm)
