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Movies: Wright's Greatest Sorrow

Click here to read the story:

• How and why Wright got into the movie business

• Which movies were actually based on his stories

• Which were based on stories he had never even seen and quickly despised.

1936,  60 minutes,  Fox,  black and white,  mono

Reviews: The reviews are as negative as usual for a movie connected with Harold Bell Wright.  The Motion Picture Guide called it a "below average programmer," and Variety says the "Harold Bell Wright story has little to commend.  Of the old gaslight drama school, it unwinds slowly."

It is apparent from the reviews, however, that the movie bears more than a passing resemblance to Wright's novel, The Recreation of Brian Kent, though the details are different.

Bellamy is a good-for-nothing polo player, who wanders from town to town begging food and other conveniences.  He is given room and board at a farm owned by a woman and her attractive daughter.  As is expected in a movie of this genre, Bellamy finds that a swindler in town is attempting to cheat them out of their homestead.  Bellamy wins $500 in a horse race and uses the money, not to pay off the mortgage, but to buy a threshing machine to harvest the farm's crop.  The swindler sets fire to the fields in an attempt to destroy the thresher.  Variety concludes, "Bellamy shows his supposed polo playing experience by driving back an old fire house pumper and putting out the fire.  That wins him the gal and presumably redemption."  As you can see on the poster above, the fire house pumper is horse-drawn.

Release: 20th Century Fox

Production:  Sol Lesser production

Director: Howard Bretherton

Writing/Screenplay: "From story by Harold Bell Wright," screenplay by Earle Snell and Don Swift.

Availability: This movie is usually available from Movies Unlimited, 3015 Darnell Road, Philadelphia, PA 19154. 1-800-668-4344 www.moviesunlimited.com.