The Broadway Sport

Hezekiah Dill is a mild-mannered clerk in a sleepy town who suddenly finds himself with unexpected cash after two thieves get locked inside the shop safe. Rather than turn the money over, he lets himself imagine the flashy life of a "Broadway Sport" and starts acting like his new persona might buy him status. His attempts to appear urbane and sophisticated lead to comic blunders, awkward romances, and townspeople who are amused or scandalized by his behavior. The story stays light, tracking the ways a single bold decision and a handful of bills can upend everyday routines without revealing how Hezekiah's experiment ends.

Directed by Carl Harbaugh and released in 1917, the film stars Stuart Holmes as Hezekiah Dill, with Wanda Hawley, Dan Mason, Mabel Rutter, and William B. Green rounding out the principal cast, making it a representative piece of American screen comedy from the silent era.

Surviving box office records for many 1910s releases are incomplete, and no reliable gross is documented for this picture. It seems to have had the modest, regionally focused distribution typical of the period rather than the national saturation of later studio blockbusters.

The Broadway Sport never entered the mainstream pop culture canon, so it doesn't have famous lines or iconic moments cited by later works. That said, it matters to silent-film collectors and archivists as an example of early comedic treatment of social ambition, and it sometimes turns up in specialized retrospectives focused on obscure or nearly lost comedies.

Modern critical assessment is sparse; contemporary ratings show virtually no recorded audience engagement, so there's no broad consensus. The film leans on themes of aspiration, social mobility, and the performative nature of identity, using misunderstandings and role-playing for humor. Its value today is mostly historical, offering a snapshot of how early cinema treated class ambition and small-town reactions to sudden change.