Wallace Reid was one of the earliest male mega stars, He appeared in a series of Reid racing films(Double Speed). When word was leaked to the "GraphiC" tabloid, Reid's career and life were about over. American's couldn't believe that the blue-eyed, chestnut haired, all American male was a drug addict. However, the suspicions were confirmed when the young actor was spirited away to a private sanitarium in March of 1922. The commitment papers had been signed by his wife Florence, a contract player at Universal Pictures who went by the name of Dorothy Davenport.

Reid spent the remainder of 1922 in a padded cell of the sanitarium. The abrupt withdrwal from morphine and the constant confinement put him over the edge. He became obsessed with the idea that he was railroaded, and some sources say he was right. Paramount, had pushed him through a nonstop schedule of "Reid racing features": "The Roaring Road", "What's Your Hurry?", and "Double Speed". The gruelling pace began to take it's toll on him.

In 1920 while working on the film"Forever", Reid took his first shot of morphine to mask his exhaustion, and heighten his energylevel, by the time the film was cut and in the can he was hooked. Toward the end of his career while working on the film "Clarence", he actually had to be propped before the camera in order to finish the film.

On the 18th of January, 1923, Wallace Reid died in his padded cell at the age of thirty. Rumours swept the motion picture industry. Rumours that suggested that Wallace Reid had been "put to sleep".