Way Back Home

Watching Way Back Home and for contemporary fans the only reason it is at all memorable is that Bette Davis has a supporting role might make one wonder what people saw in it. Thinking about it you must remember in the height of the Roaring Twenties the American people elected Calvin Coolidge as president who had just such a cultural background as did the folks in Sundays At Seth Parker's. I'll bet Coolidge was a devoted listener.

Phillips Lord's Seth Parker is a local community leader and preacher of sorts in a rural Maine community. In this era of no mass media things like a Sunday gathering at the preacher with some community singing was not uncommon. By the way check out Joel McCrea's Stars In My Crown also about a rural preacher in a bit earlier an era in a different part of the country. Note the community singing there among the young people.

The main story in the film is that Lord and his wife Effie Palmer took in young Frankie Darro after his mom died and raised him as their own. Darro's real dad Stanley Fields has been in and out of trouble for years, but now he wants to lay claim to his kid.

Another subplot involves Bette Davis as a good girl being courted by Frank Albertson who as they said back in the day was born on the left side of the blanket. Mom never married dad and Davis's mom Sophie Lord won't have her daughter going out with him. Dorothy Peterson is Albertson's mom and she is shunned by a lot of the puritanical types in the town.

Let's say the two strands of the plot come together and it all works out for all except Fields.

I think I can safely say Way Back Home will not see a remake any time soon. As it is it's picture of a bygone era or one rustic curiosity, you take your choice.

Phillips Lord plays Seth Parker om old-age make-up, a downeast Mainer who succors young lovers Frank Albertson and Bette Davis. Amidst singing old--time songs, he deals with adopted son Frankie Darro, whose natural father, Stanley Fields, shows up to demand his son.

Lord was 29 when he essayed the role for RKO, after making it an early hit on the radio. He based the character on his grandfather. He continued to play the character occasionally for the next ten years, but his further radio shows wandered far afield, including buying a four-masted schooner and sailing it around the world, searching for sunken treasure and looking at sea life. His next radio project was the well-remembered GANG BUSTERS, which he wrote and narrated. He also produced MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY.

The twice-divorced Lord died in 1975, at the age of 73.

This film gets off to a very slow start with a scene where an old New England farmer drives a tax accountant from the city nuts with his convoluted tales of bartering and swapping; being an accountant, he just wants the numbers. This went on so long, I almost gave up before the movie got underway, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It's not a great story, and it's certainly not what you'd call a Bette Davis film--she's a secondary character.

What it does do very well is to depict a rural American life that is long gone--listening in on the party line, sharing preserves with the neighbors, a taffy pull, and especially singing. The folks all gather at the preacher's house to sing the traditional American standards of the day, accompanied by the preacher's wife on a pump organ: "Love's Old Sweet Song," "Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet," "Seeing Nellie Home," and the like. I imagine these are mostly forgotten today, and it's nice to see them preserved in a relatively realistic context such as this. An unexpected pleasure.

This has the look of a silent film to the production, and with a decent story and a solid effort from Phillips Lord, is actually quite watchable. He adopts the young "Robbie" (Frankie Darro) after his brute of a father goes AWOL. Together with his wife (Effie Palmer), they soon come to love the lad, but a neighbourly dispute prompts the return of "Rufe" (Stanley Fields) to reclaim his son - despite the protestations of just about everyone else? Meantime, the young man's friend "Mary Lucy" (Bette Davis) is having family troubles of her own as her father will not let her see her beau "David" (Frank Albertson). Can they navigate the difficulties ahead find happiness? Davis (more especially, her big eyes) features quite sparingly; the film really belongs to an engaging performance from Lord as the decent family man determined to do what is right. The production is very basic. The camera work isn't helped by the editing (or is it the other way round?) but some work has gone into the characterisations and the dialogue is sparse enough to let the imagery do most the work - culminating in quite an entertaining buggy chase with some fisticuffs! No, it's not a film you are ever likely to recall watching afterwards, but it is quite fun and offers us a glimpse of rural American life in the 1920s.

Well, the first eight minutes are spent on a long, slow comedy bit between Seth (Phillips Lord) and the tax man, in an Abbott & Costello-type who's-on-first routine. That just goes on way too long. Audiences of the day would have been familiar with radio personality Seth Parker, kind of a Pa Kettle kind of guy. Bette Davis is "Mary", his daughter, who is trying to figure a way to get to the barn dance. This was only Davis' fourth role, and she plays it very straight forward... at twenty-three, she hadn't yet developed her sophisticated, scheming style. Effie Palmer is Ma Parker - in one of the two films she made, and both in 1931. One of the characters talks about going to Bangor ("Bangah"), presumably Maine, but the only new england accent we hear is one very badly-done one. The actress playing Lizzie (Sophia Lord... Phillips' actual wife) was actually BORN in Connecticut, so you'd think she would be more familiar with a new england accent! I guess that explains why she only (over)acted in this one film. Oscar Apfel (from Shop around the Corner, and SO many others) is a minor character here, but he doesn't have his usual giant, twitchy, mustache, so you almost don't recognize him. Not at all coherent; the main story seems to be Mary and David sneaking around to try to spend time together alone, but Mary's father is determined to keep them apart. There's also the side story of Rufe Turner (Stanley Fields) trying to take his son back from the man who raised him. Again, Fields' own story is quite interesting; Fields had been a boxer, moved into vaudeville, then into films. Everyone's real life story is much more interesting than the story we are watching here. Seth and his cronies sit around and sing a beautiful version of Love's Old Sweet Song at one point, but other than that there isn't much going on here. Some of the other songs used are more from the south - several Stephen Foster songs, Turkey in the Straw, which isn't really appropriate for a film taking place in Maine. Directed by William Seiter, who worked with the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy later in his career. This wasn't one of his better films.