Kenneth Paulton's new bride, Malena, turns ice cold on their wedding night. She claims that a dark fear from the past has taken hold of her, and she now is terrified of her beloved. The estranged couple board a train for San Francisco but the express derails in a fiery crash. They awaken from the disaster and find themselves in Elizabethan England. Ken and Malena relive the tragic events of a distant past, whose consequences haunt them in the present, five hundred years later!
Cecil B. DeMille's epic production The Road To Yesterday stars Joseph Schildkraut as Kenneth, the bewildered bridegroom. After rising to fame in D.W. Griffith's Orphans Of The Storm (1921), Schildkraut would have memorable roles in scores of Hollywood classics including Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935) and The Diary Of Anne Frank (1959), to name a few. He would bring home an Oscar in 1937 for his portrayal of Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emil Zola. William Boyd gained fame for his starring role as Hopalong Cassidy starting in 1935. He went on to reprise the part in 65 more productions in the years to follow and was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.