A Sporting Chance
About A Sporting Chance
Millionaire John Stonehouse takes room 420 in a Times Square hotel meaning to kill himself, hears a shot, and finds Gilberte Bonheur over Aaron Witt, whom she says she shot. He offers to take the blame, recovers the emerald Witt used to blackmail her, then watches Witt sit up and demand the stone or its price. John writes a check, takes her theater ticket, and sees the hotel scenes played on stage. Backstage she says the trick was to show a critic the plot could happen, and they admit they love each other.
Cast & crew
More about A Sporting Chance
Henry King directed. Jules Furthman wrote it under the name Stephen Fox. William Russell, who plays John, also produced. Pathé Exchange released it on June 29, 1919, in five reels, 4,670 feet. It had been announced as The Signet of Sheba. It is not the Paramount film of the same title, with Ethel Clayton, which opened that July and is lost.
Themes
Preservation
A print survives. This is not the lost Paramount film of the same name.
Notes
- Fritzi Brunette plays Gilberte Bonheur. George Periolat is Edward Craig. J. Farrell MacDonald is Luther Ripley. Lee Hill is also billed.
- John's suicide plan starts because he thinks he drank a poison. A chemist then gives him an antidote.
Scenes
- John finds Gilberte bent over Aaron Witt and offers to take the murder on himself.
- From his theater seat he watches the hotel scenes played back at him.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-a-sporting-chance)
