Monday, December 23, 2019

The Roaring Road (1919)

A light hearted early auto race film with added romance. JD Ward (Theodore Roberts) is the Bear (unfortunately to demonstrate this the film cuts to an actual bear for a few moments, which was probably a better actor). He owns a business selling cars and wants to be the first to have one of his cars win the big auto race for the third time...

One of his salesmen Toodles (Wallace Reid) wants to win the race as a driver, he also wants to marry the Bear's daughter Dorothy (Ann Little) who is known as the Cub. The Bear is not that keen on Toodles taking part in the race as he doesn't think he is good enough, and he wants him to wait a few years before he marries the Cub. (Are you still with me?)

So that is the plot, and it is a fine little film with some good humour though cab be rather hard to follow at times. Although Reid was the film's star Roberts steals the show with his typical silent movie era villain act.