Back Pay (1922) User Reviews (5)

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

[boblipton · 6/10 · 18 March 2019]

Seena Owen is tired of the small-town life. Boyfriend Matt Moore may think she looks good in a calico dress, but she thinks she has a crepe-de-chine soul. So she takes the train to New York. Five years later, she is the kept woman of J. Barney Sherry, who refuses to buy her that $22,000 mink stole; he's just bought her a Rolls-Royce. How about a vacation to that resort instead? It turns out to be next to the small town where Moore is still living. She rejects him again, kindly.

The next time she encounters Moore is when he's just back from serving in the Great War. He's blind, and Gas has gotten into his lungs, and the doctors say he'll be dead in three weeks. So...

It's from a Fanny Hurst novel, and it's directed by Frank Borzage. How you like this movie depends on what camp you consider yourself part of. I consider myself in the Frank Borzage camp. I'm just not in the Fanny Hurst camp. Borzage was not the Great Director at this time. He was a good studio director, always ready to take on a western or weeper, comedy or cliff-hanger. I honestly don't believe he began to find his voice until LAZYBONE (1925), and SEVENTH HEAVEN was a breakout film for him as well as Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. So when he was assigned to this movie, it was a great opportunity to head into Demille territory, the story of a woman leading the high life, who finds salvation in the cross.

However, unlike Demille, Borzage doesn't show us the alluring spectacle of the high life; wild partying is limited to a couple of short scenes. J. Barney Sherry is a kind man, with a practical soul, who enjoys indulging Miss Owen -- within his ample but not infinite budget; and the cross she finds her salvation in is not the one Jesus died on, but the one on the Distinguished Service Medal that Matt Moore died for. That's very typical for Borzage: always little people.

However, this is more a Fanny Hurst movie than a Borzage one, and Seena Owen was a vamp star. So when she's miserable in a Fanny Hurst Misery Subplot (patent pending), she's going to be absolutely miserable for a long time. And I'm going to be bored while she is. In this case, it's a couple of months and ten minutes of screentime before she reforms. Goodness! Satan's snares must be easy to wiggle out of!

The sort of mystical power of love that shows up in Borzage's best and most typical works is not really in operation here.... or if it is, it lacks all sense of mysticism, and is more akin to Freudian dream analysis. In the end this is a good studio hybrid work. Borzage was still struggling to find his auctorial voice and the freedom to use it.

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.

[Larry41OnEbay-2 · 7/10 · 7 April 2009]

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).

Good tear-jerker

[scsu1975 · 6/10 · 3 December 2022]

Hester Bevins tires of life in the country, and yearns to move to New York City. She leaves behind her boyfriend, Jerry Newcombe. Five years later, Hester has taken up with a Wall Street Sugar Daddy named Charles Wheeler. She revisits her home town, and runs into Jerry, who mistakenly thinks she has returned to him. Unable to tell him the truth about what she is doing, she says she is making money doing fashion design. She returns to Wheeler; meanwhile, Jerry is blinded in the war. Hester goes to see Jerry and is told that he only has a few weeks to live. She then asks Wheeler if she can marry Jerry, so he can have some happiness in his last days.

This is a decent tear-jerker, as you might expect having been based upon a Fannie Hurst novel. The actors play it pretty straight, with no maudlin scenes. The Wheeler character is a refreshing change, since he is not portrayed as a scoundrel; in fact, he is sympathetic to the plight of Hester and Jerry. Both Owen and Moore perform well. The photography is impressive, particularly in the small town scenes. One shot that stood out was Moore standing on the railroad tracks, wistfully watching Owen leaving for the city.

Though this could hardly be considered a classic, I was never bored for a minute.

The meaning of the title is suggested by the dialogue early in the film. When Owen is throwing a dinner party, a guest toasts "here's to the wages of sin," whereby Owen replies "if sin has any wages, some of us are going to collect a lot of back pay."

The Sad-Faced Seena Owen

[drednm · 26 December 2016]

Seena Owen stars as small-town Hester, a woman who yearns for the bright lights and excitement of New York. She lives in a boarding house and has a dull boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who wants to marry. Hester wants more. She tells him she has a "crepe-du-chine soul." So off goes Hester, leaving Jerry to stand on the railroad track, watching the train disappear into the distance.

Flash forward. Hester is living the high life in New York. She has s sugar daddy (J. Barney Sherry) and a slew of fancy friends ... she even has a maid. She has everything she ever wanted, but there's a nagging in her soul because she's never quite forgotten Jerry.

She takes a trip with her friends to a spa close to her home town. While they go off for a ride, she wanders the old town and finds Jerry. They talk. He's still waiting for her. She goes back to the city even more unsure of her decision.

Flash forward. Sugar daddy has by now given Hester everything she ever wanted. She has a Rolls-Royce, a house on Long Island, furs and jewels. Jerry goes off to war and is wounded. When he's shipped back home she goes to visit, but he's worse off than she expected. He might have only weeks to live. What will Hester do? Ultra-sad weepie makes good use of Seena Owen's sad face. Even at her lavish parties, she always seems sad. She's excellent as Hester. Matt Moore is also excellent as the dull-but-loyal Jerry. Ethel Duray is also good as the selfish friend.

Sets designed by Joseph Urban and directed by Frank Borzage, this was a major Cosmopolitan production. The small-town scenes were likely filmed in upstate New York or rural New Jersey.

Very good early Borzage directed film from Fannie Hurst novel. Seena Owen excellent in lead!

[mmipyle · 8/10 · 10 November 2022]

"Back Pay" (1922) stars Seena Owen, Matt Moore, J. Barney Sherry, Ethel Duray, Charles Craig, Jerry Sinclair, and others. Directed by Frank Borzage and based on a novel by Fannie Hurst, this has every single element of a Hurst plot in spades! It also shows Borzage gaining a genuine grip on his métier, a mature love story with overlying romantic idealism clouding reality, making a savory plot forced to be mixed with sweetness, something modern audiences may find slightly saccharine, but put in context with the mores of the 1920s and 1930s makes the mix rich with sophistication. What it lacks in cynicism it makes up in a nobility that seemingly has gone away from most modern productions. Borzage at his height becomes an auteur. "Back Pay" is at the beginning of Borzage's rise to prominence.

The blocking is played much like a large stage production, with nearly all close shots having actors turn toward the audience to react to a counterpart so that we can see all reaction, sometimes even speaking, when the reality would be face to face conversation. The blocking would not be thought about by an audience in 1922, but has some curiosity today that sometimes puts it out of place.

Seena Owen does a magnificent job in the lead rôle of an outlying town (read small town) girl who is far enough away from the big city (New York) to feel a thousand miles away from any modern day "action", from parties to dancing - and especially...Mammon...money, wealth enough to have anything she wants, from clothes to cars to...and this is the catcher...what?...what will satisfy her needs? Does she really know? She has a suitor, Matt Moore, just a good guy, a nice guy, a simple guy, who loves her more than anything else, who wishes to marry her and give her what he can. She loves him, too, but not enough to not want the money, the parties, the cars, the...what?

She goes to New York, meets a man of Wall Street, a much older man, J. Barney Sherry, a very street-wise, ultra sophisticated, but smarmy sugar daddy whose god is Mammon and whose soul is either missing or now in the hands of fallen angels. He gives Owen anything she wants - up to a point. She claims she has a "crepe-de-chine" soul. But she learns that Moore has been wounded in WWI, and he comes home blind and with only weeks to live. It's been more than five years since she left the small town in which she formerly lived. She's now bored to tears with her life, but doesn't know how to give it up. She goes to see Moore... Here a reformation begins, but I'll not give the plot: it's the film after all. It's Borzage.

Really good piece of film-making! There are moments of antiqueness in acting technique, but they are few and far between. Direction is impeccable for its day, though slightly hindered by some sets. Art direction is perfunctory, but especially good in the country scenes. Owen, Moore, and Barney Sherry, two of them (Owen and Sherry) former Griffith actors, are really quite good. This restored silent, part of a Kickstarter restoration project, is nicely presented on DVD by Undercrank Productions video. A very nice piano score written for this restoration accompanies the film.

Recommended. 88 minutes.