Back Pay (1922 film)

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Back Pay is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Frank Borzage. Produced for Cosmopolitan Productions by William Randolph Hearst and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it is based on a short story by Fannie Hurst and stars Seena Owen as Hester Bevins and Matt Moore as Jerry Newcombe. The film runs about 70 minutes. A 1930 sound remake also titled Back Pay stars Corinne Griffith. The movie is preserved in the Library of Congress collection.

Plot:
Hester Bevins, a young country girl, is loved by grocery clerk Jerry Newcombe. When he asks her to marry, she declines, unwilling to settle down in a dull town. She moves to New York City to make her own way. In a fashionable Riverside Drive apartment provided by wealthy Charles G. Wheeler, she grows distant from her humble roots, living with Kitty and Speed. She longs to visit home and, on a trip with Charles, Kitty, and Speed, discovers that many townspeople have forgotten her. Jerry, now the store manager, remains devoted.

Jerry goes to France with the American forces in World War I. He is badly wounded, blinded, and hospitalized. A surgeon tells Hester he has only three weeks to live, and she decides to make him happy for that time. She gains Charles’s permission to marry Jerry and bring him to the apartment. They marry and she nurses him, but he dies as they plan a future together.

After his death, Hester cannot bear the luxury of the apartment. Haunted by visions of Jerry, she leaves and moves to a small, bare room. She finds honest work, and Jerry appears to comfort her in her new life.