In 1915, when D.W. Griffith made the silent film “Way Down East,” about a city slicker despoiling a virginal heroine, he expected it to be an artistic triumph. And it was.

Griffith probably didn’t expect that the film would grab the attention of Ellsworth-born radio humorist Phillips Lord. But in the early 1930s, Lord gathered the stock characters from his NBC radio show about Down Easter Seth Parker, and went to Hollywood. With former Keystone Cop performer and screenwriter William A. Seiter as director, the crew put together the 1932 film “Way Back Home,” which will be shown as part of a winter lecture series, 7 p.m. March 2 at the Maine State Museum in Augusta.

A cornball comedy parodying Griffith’s melodrama about chilly New England mores, “Way Back Home” took place in Jonesport, Maine, (recreated in the hills of Hollywood) and fused together rural amusements, hymns, and slapstick for the first movie about the quaint Maine lives of oafish farmers, poor-but-honest heroes, and town-gossip spinsters.

In Hollywood, Lord met up with aspiring film star Bette Davis, who was 23 years old and looking for any on-screen work. She took the role of the engenue, and, in the original movie, was billed seventh.

It was Lord, a popular culture figure, who got top billing, according to Karan Sheldon, vice president of Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport.

“Phillips Lord was quite a significant national figure, and his radio popularity was enormous,” said Sheldon.

When the film was donated to Northeast Historic Film last year by Bangor resident James Phillips, Sheldon was thrilled to get it, not only because it was an early Davis film, but because it added more information to the scant file on Lord’s life.

“Way Back Home” never had the commercial success of “Way Down East,” which, of Griffith’s films, was second only to “The Birth of a Nation” in box-office receipts. But as the first film to characterize Down East humor, “Way Back Home” marks an important moment in local entertainment history.