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.

Country:

United States of America

Genre:

Drama

Duration:

50 minutes

Year:

1918

Director:

Ida May Park

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Company:

Universal Film Manufacturing Company,

Bluebird Photoplays

Cast:

Marjorie Helmer

Melville Kingston

Lottie Bangor

Mrs. Miles Kingston

Robert Grant (as George Cheseboro)

Crew:

Director

Writer

Story