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A moment from the great fight scene, in which young David (Richard Barthelmess) battles it out with the murderous Hatburn clan.
to earn money to support his bereaved family, by working in a grocery store. Eventually, it happens that he is entrusted with the mail for one trip. He runs afoul of the sadistic trio, who attempt to steal the mail and kill him. But after one of the most savage and painfully realistic fights the screen has given us, young David, shot and beaten, wins out and returns to town— less proud of his victory over the Hatburns than his of the fact that he brought the mail in and didn't betray the trust placed in him.
In synopsis form, it may sound unduly melodramatic. And certainly it has its melodramatic elements, particularly with scene-stealing Ernest Torrence playing the lecherous and feeble-minded leader of the Hatburns. But, apart from the closing reels, it is not a savage or even particularly eventful film. It tells its tale leisurely, sketching in the countryside, the people and the way of life quite admirably. Movingly played and beautifully photographed (lovely long panoramic shots of the countryside, fascinating vignettes of individual detail), it was dominated by the moving and forceful performance of Richard Barthelmess, who managed to look a good deal younger than he was. It remains his most famous role and his best performance.
Initially, the story had been owned by Griffith, who saw no immediate likelihood of filming it— especially after the not dissimilar Way Down East. Barthelmess, then wanting to set up his own company, took the property off Griffith's hands, and with director Henry
King formed Inspiration Pictures, for release through First National.
The choice of King to direct Tol'able David was a particularly happy one. Prior to 1921, King, a former actor, had always been a competent director, but never a brilliant one. And to a large degree, that categorization still stands. He is a good organizer, will take huge crews to locations all over the world, turn out "big" pictures and "big" moneymakers, like The Snows of Kilimanjaro and David and Bathsheba, and yet always miss greatness.
King's forte is his astonishing perception in handling films of Americana. His best films— Will Rogers' State Fair, the more recent I'd Climb the Highest Mountain —have been sincerely and sensitively made films on various aspects of rural America. They have all been so good that one wonders why he has made so few films like that and so many big, but dull, spectacles.
Tol'able David was by far the best of King's Americana films, and quite certainly his masterpiece. It's interesting that both Tol'able David and Way Down East were re-made a little over ten years later as talkies; but already the period that they tried to evoke had begun to disappear, and the new films lacked the ring of truth of the originals.
The highest praise one can bestow on Tol'able David is that even had Griffith made it as he planned, it probably wouldn't have been a better picture than the one Henry King made in 1921 with Richard Barthelmess and little Gladys Hulette.
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