The Road to Ruin
Lantern slide
Directed byNorton S. Parker
Written byWillis Kent
Produced byWillis Kent
StarringHelen Foster
CinematographyHenry Cronjager
Edited byEdith Wakeling
Distributed byTrue-Life Photoplays
Release date
  • March 23, 1928 (1928-03-23)
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)
Box office$2,500,000[1]

The Road to Ruin is a 1928 American silent black-and-white exploitation film directed by Norton S. Parker and starring Helen Foster. Due to the popularity of the film, a sound version was made late in 1928. While the sound version of the film has no audible dialog, it featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film is about a teenage girl, Sally Canfield, whose life is led astray by sex and drugs, and ruined by an abortion. The film was remade as a talkie in 1934.

Cast

Music

The sound version featured a theme song entitled “The Road to Ruin” by Lottie Wells and Maurice Wells.

Production

The Road to Ruin was made on a budget of either $15,000 or $25,000, making it one of the cheapest films made that year.[2] Director Norton S. Parker later told his wife that lead actress Helen Foster was much like her character in that she was relatively naive; during the filming of the strip poker scenes, Parker kept a bottle of hard alcohol to offer Foster "liquid courage". The film was shot by Henry Cronjager using a hand-cranked camera typical of the era, but at faster-than-normal crank speed; this helped fill up each reel and getting the final film to feature length, but had the effect of making all the action in the film move slower.[3]

References

  1. ^ Box Office Information for The Road to Ruin
  2. ^ "Star Gazing Along Movie Way". The Belleville News-Democrat. Vol. 73 No. 275 16 November 1928 p 7. Accessed 31 March 2022.
  3. ^ Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. p 176.

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