The Quitter

Charley Grapewin enlisted in the army during the First World War and left his wife, Emma Dunn, to run their weekly paper. He never came back, and she raised their two sons. Now there is a crisis going on. The younger son has been sent to military school and the elder, William Bakewell, has returned from college with plans of converting the paper to a daily to compete with the city papers moving in. Also, Grapewin has returned, although he has not told the sons.

It's presented as a two-set play, opened slightly, and director Richard Thorpe has cameraman M.A. Andersen and the unnamed editor breathe some life into the presentation with shifting angles and well-timed cuts. Given the small budgets available to Chesterfield in this period, Thorpe was a fine choice as director. He was one of those directors who could do very well with small budgets.

It's an interesting story about the small-town paper trade, written by Robert Ellis, who was done with acting and directing. He would continue as a screenwriter, mostly for 20th Century-Fox, through 1950 and live to be 82, dying in 1974.

The first things that will strike a modern viewer about The Quitter are the very austere sound (no background music, very little noise other than people talking), the "stagey" sets and performances, and the morality-play structure of it all in which most plot developments are telegraphed long before they occur.

If you can't get past these trappings, I don't blame you. If you can, there are some very interesting characters here and a plot that takes the characters' merits and flaws to their logical conclusion. It's not great, and it's not high tragedy, but it is a glimpse into the way people once thought (or once thought they thought).

Also it has Mary from the original Little Rascals playing a "loose" young woman who is nevertheless shown to be good. Better, as it turns out, than the man who attack her for her promiscuity.