Branding Broadway (1918)
Directed by William S. Hart / Lambert Hillyer
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Synopsis by Hans J. Wollstein
Drunk and disorderly cowpoke Robert Sands (William S. Hart) is banished from an Arizona frontier town and hops on a freight train heading for New York. Arriving in Manhattan, the rough-and-tumble cowboy obtains a position as "physical guardian" to a spoiled member of the social register (Arthur Shirley). Charged with recovering a series of compromising letters from the young wastrel to a female restaurant owner (Seena Owen), the Westerner falls in love with the girl himself. Realizing that he is a duck out of water among the city swells, Sands magnanimously resolves to put his employer's happiness ahead of his own and bring the two youngsters together. Branding Broadway was a refreshing departure for the usually so forbidding western star and critic Louis Reeves Harrison, of Moving Picture World, found it "a pleasure to see Hart in a completely new role."
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Keywords
big-city, city-life, cowboy, fish-out-of-water, guardian, love, matchmaker, range, return, town