The Risky Road

The Risky Road

50 mins | Drama | April 8, 1918

Ida May Park started in the film business as a scriptwriter, but in 1917 Universal announced that Park would direct films with actress and producer Dorothy Phillips for the company’s Bluebird brand. Park’s films often had a strong female perspective and The Risky Road is no exception. The story of a country girl who comes to the city to work, but falls for a rich man and undeservedly gets a bad reputation, the film was marketed as “the drama every woman should see”. The surviving fragment, showing the despair of Phillips’s character, is a real cinematic gem that leaves one yearning for more material of the film to be discovered. In 2008, a tinted nitrate fragment, with Swedish intertitles at the opening of the second reel, was deposited at the Archival Film Collections of the Svenska Filminstitutet. From the fragment, a 35mm B&W duplicate negative was made, from which this print was struck using the tinting of the nitrate as color reference.

The Risky Road

50 mins | Drama | April 8, 1918

The Risky Road
Ida May Park started in the film business as a scriptwriter, but in 1917 Universal announced that Park would direct films with actress and producer Dorothy Phillips for the company’s Bluebird brand. Park’s films often had a strong female perspective and The Risky Road is no exception. The story of a country girl who comes to the city to work, but falls for a rich man and undeservedly gets a bad reputation, the film was marketed as “the drama every woman should see”. The surviving fragment, showing the despair of Phillips’s character, is a real cinematic gem that leaves one yearning for more material of the film to be discovered. In 2008, a tinted nitrate fragment, with Swedish intertitles at the opening of the second reel, was deposited at the Archival Film Collections of the Svenska Filminstitutet. From the fragment, a 35mm B&W duplicate negative was made, from which this print was struck using the tinting of the nitrate as color reference.
Producers Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Bluebird Photoplays
Original title The Risky Road
Directors Ida May Park
Writers Katherine Leiser Robbins, Ida May Park

Cast

Dorothy Phillips

as Marjorie Helmer

William Stowell

as Melville Kingston

Juanita Hansen

as Lottie Bangor

Claire Du Brey

as Mrs. Miles Kingston

George Chesebro

as Robert Grant (as George Cheseboro)

Edward Cecil

as Miles Kingston

Joseph W. Girard

as Van Belt (as Joseph Girard)

Sally Starr

as Myrtle