The Road to Ruin (1928 film) explained

The Road to Ruin
Director:Norton S. Parker
Producer:Willis Kent
Starring:Helen Foster
Cinematography:Henry Cronjager
Editing:Edith Wakeling
Distributor:True-Life Photoplays
Runtime:60 min.
Country:United States
Language:Silent (English intertitles)
Gross:$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.[2] Due to its popularity, a sound version of the film was released 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, smoking, and drinking, 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.[3] 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.[4]

Notes and References

  1. https://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/movie.cgi?title=The%20Road%20to%20Ruin&year=1928 Box Office Information for The Road to Ruin
  2. https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/R/RoadToRuin1928.html Progressive Silent Film List: The Road to Ruin
  3. "Star Gazing Along Movie Way". The Belleville News-Democrat. Vol. 73 No. 275, 16 November 1928, p. 7. Accessed 31 March 2022.
  4. [Kevin Brownlow|Brownlow, Kevin]