The Girl by the Roadside is a 1917 Bluebird Photoplay crime drama presented by seasoned veterans of the film industry, including director, Theodore Marston, a former theater actor, who transitioned to film and directed several crime dramas, including 1918’s Beyond the Law, and one of Universal’s most popular actresses, Violet Mersereau, whose career spanned eighteen years from 1908-1926. The Girl by the Roadside functions as a cultural mediator, processing and addressing the complex social circumstances of the period through its narrative, while also acting as a microcosmic reflection of the transitional nature of the American film industry in the 1910s, reflecting an industry in the midst of a transition. A transition which eventually proved
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In this case, the aforementioned themes of female fragility and malleability were common tropes portrayed by Mersereau in most, if not all of her films as an adult, which suggests a standardization of casting which aided the marketing of films that were receiving greater national visibility. For the most part Mersereau portrayed a young, vulnerable, and charming, girl who falls in love, usually in the context of her coming of age, and often having to fight for her honor, which is exactly her characterization in The Girl by the Roadside ("The Girl by the Roadside"). Other films in her extensive filmography, including, The Gentle Art of Burglary, and Little Miss Nobody further indicate the typecast nature of film career as an adult, which only began to change when she began to fade from stardom in the early to mid-1920s which resulted in her taking roles as secondary characters and mothers. In fact, one trade magazine published a portion of a letter from a fan in which they complained that Mersereau was playing “the innocent country girl again” (“The Answer Man”). However, another concedes that the role of Judith is a departure for Mersereau but it appears to be a result of her becoming aged out of the roles common in her career as a child and teen in which she often played a wild child. The same review also states that there is more action and mystery to …show more content…
A Motion Picture News article explained that Bluebird’s scenario department was acquiring a plethora of book rights, including The Girl by the Roadside, suggesting the emergence book adaptations as a narrative development standard in Bluebird (“Many New Stories for Bluebird Stars’).This adaptation drew fans of both lead actress Violet Mersereau and Vanardy’s, likely aiming to maximize its audience and, thus profitability. Furthermore, the middlebrow nature of the narrative base of film’s attraction, Vanardy’s novel, suggests that Bluebird, and thus Universal were working toward a standardized mass audience of roughly middle-class people, in addition to those across classes who may have been drawn to the film by Mersereau’s star power. However, it is obvious that the method of adaptation, at least for Bluebird in particular, was still being perfected because the reviews of the film in trade magazines varied and appeared to misunderstand aspects of the film, with each stressing vital information from the film that the other reviews completely overlooked. In fact one review explicitly said that the plot was not clearly worked out, suggesting the viewers found the film somewhat confusing. Despite this film’s imperfect execution of a novel
In this case, the aforementioned themes of female fragility and malleability were common tropes portrayed by Mersereau in most, if not all of her films as an adult, which suggests a standardization of casting which aided the marketing of films that were receiving greater national visibility. For the most part Mersereau portrayed a young, vulnerable, and charming, girl who falls in love, usually in the context of her coming of age, and often having to fight for her honor, which is exactly her characterization in The Girl by the Roadside ("The Girl by the Roadside"). Other films in her extensive filmography, including, The Gentle Art of Burglary, and Little Miss Nobody further indicate the typecast nature of film career as an adult, which only began to change when she began to fade from stardom in the early to mid-1920s which resulted in her taking roles as secondary characters and mothers. In fact, one trade magazine published a portion of a letter from a fan in which they complained that Mersereau was playing “the innocent country girl again” (“The Answer Man”). However, another concedes that the role of Judith is a departure for Mersereau but it appears to be a result of her becoming aged out of the roles common in her career as a child and teen in which she often played a wild child. The same review also states that there is more action and mystery to …show more content…
A Motion Picture News article explained that Bluebird’s scenario department was acquiring a plethora of book rights, including The Girl by the Roadside, suggesting the emergence book adaptations as a narrative development standard in Bluebird (“Many New Stories for Bluebird Stars’).This adaptation drew fans of both lead actress Violet Mersereau and Vanardy’s, likely aiming to maximize its audience and, thus profitability. Furthermore, the middlebrow nature of the narrative base of film’s attraction, Vanardy’s novel, suggests that Bluebird, and thus Universal were working toward a standardized mass audience of roughly middle-class people, in addition to those across classes who may have been drawn to the film by Mersereau’s star power. However, it is obvious that the method of adaptation, at least for Bluebird in particular, was still being perfected because the reviews of the film in trade magazines varied and appeared to misunderstand aspects of the film, with each stressing vital information from the film that the other reviews completely overlooked. In fact one review explicitly said that the plot was not clearly worked out, suggesting the viewers found the film somewhat confusing. Despite this film’s imperfect execution of a novel