Way Back Home

Way Back Home (1931)

Idol of 10,000,000 Radio Fans...NOW ON THE SCREEN! In a Teeming, Action-Packed Melodrama of Human Emotions!

A rural Maine farmer fights for custody of the boy who he's raised as his own.

Date of release
1931-11-13
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 21m
Genres
Drama
Director
William A. Seiter

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Way Back Home is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Phillips Lord, Effie Palmer, Frank Albertson and Bette Davis. The screenplay was written by Jane Murfin based on characters created by Lord for the NBC Radio show Seth Parker.

Production

Phillips Lord had created the character of preacher and folksy philosopher Seth Parker for a Sunday night series broadcast by NBC Radio. Its popularity led RKO Radio Pictures to purchase the film rights and assign Jane Murfin to write a screenplay with Parker and his wife as the central characters.

Berman negotiated with Universal Pictures for the loan of Bette Davis, whose contract with the studio had been recently renewed following her completion of Waterloo Bridge, and Carl Laemmle, Jr. agreed to loan her for a fee of $300 per week. Davis was pleased with the attention paid to her by cinematographer J. Roy Hunt. She later recalled: "I was truly overjoyed. Plus the part I played was an important one—and a charming one.

The film was shot on location in Santa Cruz, California because of the small town's New England-like atmosphere. Much of the rural farm setting was filmed at the Hunsucker Ranch in Scotts Valley, a well-known filming location at the time. The ranch was also used as a filming location for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) and Hide-Out (1934).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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