Melville Jacob Shyer was an American film director, screenwriter and producer and one of the founders of the Directors Guild of America. His career spanned over 50 years, during which he worked with Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith.

The Road to Ruin is a 1934 pre-Code exploitation film directed by Dorothy Davenport, under the name "Mrs. Wallace Reid", and Melville Shyer, and written by Davenport with the uncredited contribution of the film's producer, Willis Kent. The film, now in the public domain, portrays a young woman whose life is ruined by sex and drugs.