AllMovie

This 990-foot Biograph "temperance melodrama" was filmed in late November of 1909. Charles Craig plays the leading character, an alcoholic husband and father. When his wife objects to his constant drinking, he walks out on her, whereupon she briefly goes insane. With her little child in tow, the wife wanders distractedly through the streets, thence to the country, where she collapses exhausted outside of a farmhouse. As she sleeps, her child toddles away and subsequently is "adopted" by a local farmer. Fifteen years later, the formerly drunken husband has become a prosperous businessman, as indicated by his fancy automobile. Chancing to drive by the rural home of his long-lost daughter, the man falls in love with the girl, never dreaming that she is his own flesh and blood. On the day of the wedding, the man's now-aged wife suddenly appears, calling an abrupt halt to the nuptials and setting the stage for an emotional reunion. Among the Griffith stock-members appearing in the film are James Kirkwood, Stephanie Longfellow, W. Christie Miller, George Nichols, Frank Powell, and, in her movie debut, Blanche Sweet. Location scenes for The Rocky Road were filmed in Hackensack and Edgewater, New Jersey.