Zeus

Way Back Home (1931)

• Director
  • William A. Seiter
• Writer
  • Jane Murfin(story)
• Stars
  • Phillips Lord
  • Effie Palmer
  • Frank Albertson

  The bucolic tearjerker Way Back Home is a spin-off of the popular radio series Seth Parker, with Phillips H. Lord, creator-star of the radio original, repeating his role as backwoods philosopher Parker. The plot centers on the romantic tribulations of Mary Lucy (Bette Davis, who received the munificent sum of $300 per week for her performance!), and David Clark (Frank Albertson), who are being kept apart by their feuding parents. Armed with a surfeit of advice -- and, on occasion, a shotgun -- Seth Parker helps the lovers overcome a nasty local scandal during their journey to the altar. Deftly woven into the screenplay are such rural pastimes as taffy-pulling, community "sings," and barn dances. It's hard to believe that Phillips Lord, so convincing as the kindly Parker, was the same man responsible for the blood-and-thunder radio serial I Love a Mystery. In England, where the radio program was an unknown commodity, Way Back Home was retitled Old Greatheart.