Casting was underway as of 26 February 1924, as noted in that day’s edition of the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. The film had previously been known by its working title, Extravagance. It marked lead actress Ruth Roland’s return to the screen after a one-year absence, during which she achieved considerable success in real estate, according to the 2 March 1924 Los Angeles Times. It was also her first of two releases from Co-Artists Productions, which the actress had formed with director Tod Browning. The start of principal photography at FBO Studios in Hollywood, CA, was announced in the next day’s issue.
       On 4 Mar 1924, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Los Angeles Board of Education approved the use of the city’s school buildings as locations, based on “a careful survey of the story” by board member Mrs. George H. Clarke, Los Angeles Banks’ School Savings Association president W. R. Morehouse, and banker Charles H. Deppe. The 7 March 1924 Los Angeles Times noted that some scenes were filmed on a set resembling the lobby of an unidentified “famous hotel,” constructed on the FBO lot. Roland invited several of her friends to appear in hotel scenes as background actors. Also featured in the picture was press agent Lou Marangella in an uncredited role, as stated in the 29 March 1924 Exhibitors Herald. The impending close of principal photography was announced in the 16 March 1924 Los Angeles Times.
       The 15 June 1924 [Buffalo, NY] Courier reported that a “Ruth Roland dollar down club” was organized by local residents to “organize theater parties and social gatherings.” Three months later, the 12 September 1924 Los Angeles Evening Express stated that Roland screened a seven-reel version of the picture at a convention of the American Bankers’ Association in Chicago, IL. W. R. Morehouse commended the feature as a “novel presentation” on the virtue of thrift. Roland was also depicted in the same edition, posing with a group of children, referred to as the “Thrift Fairies of the Angeles Mesa school.”
       Dollar Down opened on 1 August 1925 at Loew’s Broadway Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. A chart in the 15 August 1925 Motion Picture News indicated that the film was due for an October 1925 release on the states’ rights market. The 29 August 1925 issue dismissed the film as little more than “a sermon on thrift.”
       This film has been preserved and tinted from a decomposing print. A 35mm copy was screened on 7 October 2023, celebrated as Silent Movie Day, at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater in West Los Angeles.