Ruth of the Range (1923)

​Ruth of the Range ​is a lost 1923 motion picture serial, the last to be written by Gilson Willets and the only one of its kind to be completed by another writer, Frank Leon Smith. It starred Ruth Roland as the title character.

The Plot

Ruth Culver is the daughter of the master of the Culver Ranch, and her father has died, leaving her his formula for fuelite, a gasoline substitute that can run a vehicle as well as the real thing. Unfortunately, realizing that evil villains want to steal the formula and market it as their own work, he has hidden it somewhere on the ranch property or house. The villain kidnaps Ruth in an effort to locate the formula, but she escapes and, aided by her handsome fiancee, manages to thwart his plan and recover the fuelite formula for posterity.

The Comments
Gilson Willets died while in the process of writing this serial, leaving nothing to show how he intended to plot to run, so Smith used the existing footage to created his own plot for the first part of the serial. There were tensions between second unit director Woodbridge van Dyke and Ruth Roland, to the point that she took off for a vacation with the last two chapters left to shoot. She was replaced by her stunt double, Bob Rose, a former fireman who had been making a loving doubling Ruth and other actresses for Universal Studios.