The Real Adventure on AllMovie

The emancipation of women was still growing in fits and starts in 1922 (they had won the right to vote only a couple years earlier), as this drama illustrates. Not surprisingly, it's the work of director King Vidor (whose career was still on the rise), and stars then-wife, Florence Vidor. After a brief courtship, Rose Stanton (Florence Vidor) marries lawyer Rodney Aldrich (Clyde Fillmore). She wants to be a helpmate, rather than just a plaything to him, but her attempts to study law are met with derision. So Rose leaves Rodney and goes to New York, explaining in a note that she will return when she has earned the right to be his equal. Rose heads for Broadway and lands in the chorus, but soon enough her talent as a designer is discovered and the great Ziegfeld gives her a two year contract to create the costumes for the Follies. But her husband shows up in a more understanding mood, and (this being 1922, after all) she tears up the contract and drops everything to return to her career as a wife and mother. A novel by Henry Kitchell formed the basis for this picture. Incidentally, Vidor made one significant error -- he showed the supposedly wealthy and influential Aldrich taking a streetcar instead of a taxi. Perhaps the director's own success was recent enough to make him neglectful regarding this one fine point.