Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
GManfred
Two prospectors come across an abandoned covered wagon - abandoned, that is, except for a baby. They have a disagreement, one stays to raise the baby and the other leaves, leaving his partner holding the bag, er, baby. Fast forward twenty-odd years, and the baby grows up to be William Boyd. The two prospectors are deadly enemies, and the grown-up baby tries to bring them together. Added bonus; the one who left now has a pretty daughter, a development not lost on the boy.The story is fairly interesting and could have been more so if the movie hadn't been cannibalized and crucial scenes removed for other movies. Several reviewers have mentioned some scenes have been taken out and with them much of the excitement was drained from the film. In addition, the acting is slow and deliberate giving the movie an artificial, stilted feel and will catch modern audiences off balance. On the whole, though, it is worth a look due to the peculiar nature of the subject matter, and to see Clark Gable as a bad guy minus his customary charm, and William Boyd before he hit the bigtime as Hopalong Cassidy.
Stormy_Autumn
"The Painted Desert" (1931) is an interesting old (tight budgeted) western. As a baby little Bill is found in an empty covered wagon. Jeff Cameron, the man who finds him, wants to raise him. Bill 'Cash' Holbrook steals the baby daring Jeff to try to stop him. He knows Jeff won't do anything that might endanger the baby's life. There will be no gun play.Jeff marries and has a daughter, Mary Ellen. Cash never marries but he does raise Bill who turns into a fine man anyway. While out working the range Bill finds 'tungsten' on Jeff's property. He tries to bring the 2 ex-friends back together to work the mine. It doesn't work well but he gets to know Mary Ellen better. Everything begins to fall apart thanks to Rance Brett trying to come between the 4 of them. Brett is a major troublemaker and one nasty dude who always gets what he wants (LOL). ***A Small Spoiler*** There isn't a great bunch of bloody action here. It's along the line of the old Saturday Matinée piece where the good guy always won. There is an interesting piece of gun play between Cash and Jeff towards the end.Cast: Bill Boyd....young Bill Holbrook (Good guy who later becomes well-known as Hopalong Cassidy), Helen Twelvetrees....Mary Ellen Cameron, William Farnum....Bill 'Cash' Holbrook, J. Farrell MacDonald....Jeff Cameron, Clark Gable....Rance Brett (Bad guy who later becomes well-known as Rhett Butler).
netwallah
An inferior, low-budget western, whose only distinction is a very early part played by Clark Gable—he's not a good guy. This small villainy he carries of fairly well, but the movie's really not about him. The main star is the incredibly wooden William Boyd in his pre-Hopalong Cassidy days. What can I say about him? He occupies space. He makes John Wayne look hyperactive. I saw him once when I was a boy; he was impressive, wearing his black outfit and white-haired and riding a white horse in a parade, brought to Kansas, I think, by the dairy that sponsored his television show, which I never saw. Anyway, the story starts out amusingly, with two grizzled cowpokes arguing over who gets to keep an orphan boy they discover, but then the story lapses into a feud between the two men, and Bill falls for the pretty daughter (Helen Twelvetrees) of the cowpoke who didn't raise him. The Gable character, also attracted to the girl, tries to accelerate the feud and destroys Bill's tungsten mine, but to no avail—he doesn't get the girl. The dialogue is stilted, the continuity bumpy, and only the repeated shot of the street outside the barn-sized door of the tavern is really effective.
space-13
Clark Gable's acting potential is evident in this cowboy film of feuding families. He's not sorry for his crimes, which makes him more interesting than everyone else in their complete predictability. Helen Twelvetrees, Our Heroine, seems like she's stepped right out of silent films into talkies without realizing the difference between them.
