Tod Browning's lost morality tale: credit card debt before credit cards existed.
Just before he propelled the crime melodrama to new, macabre heights in The Unholy Three, Browning directed this partially lost morality tale pertaining to a different kind of horror: that of a middle-class family living beyond their means and falling prey to moneylenders. Produced by and starring Ruth Roland for FBO Studios, a small operation that later became RKO Pictures, Dollar Down follows Roland as the spendthrift daughter of a manufacturing firm’s general manager (Henry Walthall), who pawns a ring purchased on credit to throw an extravagant party and sends the family’s livelihood into a tailspin. Because its last reel completely disintegrated before it could be copied, the film remains an ultra-rare curio that nonetheless captures an important chapter in Browning’s career before his successful string of films made for MGM.
Direction
Browning's early mastery of domestic dread.
Acting
Ruth Roland's magnetic, self-destructive glamour.
Director
Tod Browning
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The final reel literally turned to dust before preservation, making this one of the most incomplete Browning films extant.
Released during the Roaring Twenties' credit boom, it now reads as eerily prophetic of 1929's collapse.
US
