Media Play News: Blu-Ray release of Frank Borzage 1922 Silent Film from the Fannie Hurst story, “BACK PAY”

Update 3/27/2023: Read more on Frank Borsage, Fannie Hurst’s short story, and BackPay from Film International This week, Media Play News reviewed the new Blue Ray DVD release of Frank Borsage’s 1922 film, Back Pay (remade in 1930), from one of Fannie Hurst’s multitude of short stories. It reminded me of one of the excellent, serendipitous things to come out of my decades hanging out in libraries. Back in the mid-1990s, I spent time at the Library of Congress, among other pursuits, watching “Back Pay” and other silent films and talkies based on Fannie Hurst short stories and novels. (Not the least among them are Imitation of Life, Back Street, and Humoresque, all, like Back Pay, in multiple versions.) Madeline Matz, the film librarian at the time, suggested I get in touch with Cari Beauchamp. At the time, Cari was writing Without Lying Down, her biography of the screenwriter Frances Marion. Marion turned many of Fannie’s stories into films, including Back Pay. Cari and I have had a bicoastal friendship ever since.

and dear Madeline Matz. The real joy of our research is the extended family that results @backlotsfilm https://t.co/JHkSnORSzn

— cari beauchamp (@caribeauchamp) March 12, 2023

Here’s Fannie’s original story, “Back Pay,” as found in a reprint on the Internet Archive. It appeared in the November 1919 issue of Cosmopolitan (vol. 67, pp. 35-40, 129-140).

And here is what I wrote about the magazine and movie deal in Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst. The information came from my research into the Fannie Hurst papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin back in 1995. Fannie has place in Undaunted, too.

From “Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst” by Brooke Kroeger-Times Books Random House 199… by Brooke Kroeger on Scribd