Partners Cash Holbrook (William Farnum) and Jeff Cameron (J. Farrell McDonald) find an orphaned baby in the desert and immediately begin feuding over who will raise him. They decide to part ways, and Holbrook winds up riding off with the boy.
Years later, they’re still feuding. Holbrook is a successful rancher; Cameron near penniless, but determined not to let Holbrook’s cattle use the water on his property. He and daughter Mary Ellen (Helen Twelvetress) will drive them off at gunpoint, if necessary.
Then Bill Holbrook (William Boyd) — the infant boy now grown — makes a discovery he thinks will mend fences: The Cameron property includes rich mineral deposits. He wants his adopted dad to help finance the mining operations.
Cash will have nothing to do with the venture and kicks his “son” out of the home. He lands on Cameron’s doorstep and immediately falls for Mary Ellen. But Helen has another admirer, Rance Brett (Clark Gable), a cowpoke who found badly needed water on the Cameron ranch and offered to help “even up the odds” when Holbrook and his herd came calling.
Now, the mine is a success, but someone’s trying to sabotage it. And it seems everyone but Bill Holbrook thinks Cash Holbrook is behind those shenanigans.
Review:
You might want to watch this film for its curiosity value, but you’ll likely find it hopelessly slow, stilted and melodramatic. It doesn’t date nearly as well as many of the early talkies.
Nor does the plot make a lot sense. When they part, Cash is determined to head west til he finds grazing land. Years later, they’re still virtual neighbors. Also odd is the sudden confession to all the evil-doing by Gable’s character, with little prodding, in front of a bar full of witnesses.
The film did mark Clark Gable’s first talking role as well as one of his first credited roles. And it marked one of the few Westerns that William Boyd appeared in because gaining fame as Hopalong Cassidy.
The female lead, Helen Twelvetrees, was one of the leading female stars of the early 1930s. She died of a sedative overdose, ruled a suicide, at age 49 in her home near Harrisburg, Pa., and was buried in a grave that remained unmarked for more than 50 years after her passing in 1958. She had appeared in her last film nearly 20 years earlier.
Directed by:
Howard Higgin
Cast:
William Boyd … Bill Holbrook
Helen Twelvetrees … Mary Ellen Cameron
William Farnum … Cash Holbrook
J. Farrell Mac Donald … Jeff Cameron
Clark Gable … Rance Brett
Charles Sellon … Tonopah
Edmund Breese … Judge Matthews
Hugh Adams … Dynamite
Wade Boteler … Bob Carson
Will Walling .. Kirby
Edward Hearn … Tex
William LeMaire .. Denver
Richard Cramer … Provney
Runtime: 74 min.
Memorable lines:
Cash Holbrook to Jeff Cameron: “A grubstake is just about as far as you can see. I’m headin’ west ’til I hit grazing land. I’ve put up with your stubbornness ever since we started out, Jeff. No I’m done with you.”
Cash Holbrook: “I raised you single-handed and alone. I sent you to mining school when you ought to have been punching cows. I always let you have your say, most always your own way. But I’ll see you eternally in fire and brimstone before I let you stand up there and tell me to be friends with Jeff Cameron.”
Mary Ellen: “The desert’s taken so much away from dad. It doesn’t seem possible it’s about to pay it all back.”
Bill Holbrook to his two dads, as he nurses a wound: “I don’t know which one of you did that, but you’re both bad shots.”
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