When Bearcat Went Dry is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by Oliver L. Sellers from the novel by Charles Neville Buck, and starring Lon Chaney as Kindard Powers. The title refers to a character nicknamed "Bearcat" (Bernard J. Durning) who promises his girlfriend that he will quit drinking liquor. The plot involving a promise to give up drinking was timely given the passage of the Wartime Prohibition Act, which took effect on June 30, 1919, and banned the sale of alcoholic beverages, and ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in January of the same year.

Portions of the film were shot on location in Marlin, Kentucky. It was considered to be a lost film until a print was donated to the American Film Institute from the private collection of projectionist Bill Buffum in 1996. (Another print with Dutch intertitles is said to be stored at the Netherlands Film Museum in Amsterdam (missing a few titles in the first reel).) Oddly enough, legendary silent film collector John Hampton also claimed to once own a nitrate print that was destroyed when his basement flooded. The film was re-issued on 4/20/28, and it may be that these later release prints are the ones that survived.