The Painted Desert

It's a different kind of western, with little action, all right, but it has a good plot and excellent performances, especially from the veterans William Farnum (Cash) and J. Farrel MacDonald (Jeff). Their interpretation of two friends turned into enemies because of a baby boy they found in the desert is wonderful. Helen Twelvetrees (Mary Ellen) is a flesh and blood Betty Boop and shows with her faces the transition from silent film heroines to those of the sound era. The plot has a simple, but coherent structure that leads to a happy ending. In the whole, "The Painted Desert" has not much of action but it's an enjoyable western movie to watch.

The only thing I can say after watching this movie is that I saw some history. This movie is over 90-years-old as of today and it looked it. The picture quality and the sound were a tad above awful and the acting was not far behind. Cinematic issues aside, this movie had a very simplistic plot and I still had a hard time following it. It was too hard to make out the faces to know who was who and who did what.

Two traveling companions, Cash Holbrook (William Boyd) and Jeff Cameron (J. Farrell MacDonald), found an abandoned baby boy. What do you think their next course of action was? If you said locate a family for him then you're wrong. They got into a lifelong feud over the boy. They split right then and there over who should raise the boy and Cash Holbrook was the victor in that respect. He raised him and named him Bill Holbrook (William Boyd).

Years later, when Bill was an adult, we got to see what became of Bill and the two men. Cash was the wealthy owner of a cattle company while Jeff was a struggling rancher who owned the rights to a local watering hole. Jeff's watering hole was the only thing Cash wanted of his.

Bill would eventually split from his father and go work for Jeff. Actually, Cash kicked his adopted son out of the house which prompted Bill to go work for Jeff. Why was Bill run off by his pa? Bill had the audacity to suggest that Cash work with Jeff to help mine some tungsten on Jeff's land. For such a blasphemous suggestion Cash ran off his beloved adopted son.

Would Jeff and Cash ever become friends again? Would Bill ever reunite with his adoptive father? It wasn't very compelling stuff, but what else were you going to watch in 1931?

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Two men traveling west find a baby boy in the desert and quarrel over which one will raise him. One steals away with the boy and becomes a wealthy rancher while the other stays put beside a waterhole and remains an impoverished homesteader.

Years later the boy has grown up to become a fair-minded man who tries to reconcile the two bitter enemies, partnering with his father's old friend in a mining operation beset by mistrust due to unexplained sabotage.

The Painted Desert is mostly remembered nowadays for featuring future Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd and the first talking performance by Clark Gable.

Though undoubtedly harmed by having nearly all it's action sequences carved up as stock footage for later films, it's still worth watching and has a nice Hollywood sheen not seen in later B-westerns.

The Painted Desert is a less than average western in which Clark Gable made his first film with any billing. Previously he had been a bit player in several silent features, but this his first role of any substance. It's the only reason The Painted Desert has any significance in Hollywood history.

Made for Pathe Pictures just before they merged with RKO, The Painted Desert is the story of two old desert rats, William Farnum and J. Farrell MacDonald who find an infant alive in a covered wagon on the desert.

For reasons I don't understand, a disagreement about whether to lay claim to a waterhole or to push on further and find enough land for a cattle ranch turns these friends into blood enemies. Farnum takes the infant and raises him as his own.

The infant grows up to be William Boyd in his pre-Hopalong Cassidy days and he becomes a mining engineer and discovers tungsten ore on the MacDonald property. He also takes a shine to MacDonald's daughter Helen Twelvetrees. Also in the race for her hand is Clark Gable.

Gable's performance as the roughneck rival to Boyd caught some attention at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and he became within a year, the studio's biggest star ever in its existence.

Possibly due to bad editing, possibly to bad writing, but The Painted Desert is far from the greatest western I've ever seen. But it yielded something far more valuable than tungsten.

Two long time friends find a baby boy left behind within an abandoned camp in old Arizona, and their conflict over who should take charge of the infant quickly lowers their relationship to the freezing point, where it remains for over 20 years although they are neighbouring ranchers, and the grown youth's attempt to bring about a reconciliation forms the heart of this interesting early western. William Boyd, later renowned as Hopalong Cassidy, is featured as the young man, Bill, raised by Cash Holbrook (William Farnum), with J. Farrell MacDonald as Jeff Cameron, the other of the feuding pair, and when Bill, a mining engineer, discovers a valuable lode of tungsten ore on Cameron's land, he forthwith fosters a mining project which he believes will be putting an end to the longstanding conflict. Actually filmed in Arizona's scenic Painted Desert region, the work is efficiently directed by Howard Higgin, who is abetted by the fine camerawork of Edward Snyder, with excellent sets arranged by Carroll Clark, and the cast generally performs well, a strong performance being given by Clark Gable as a completely unrepentant villain, only the tasteless characterization by Helen Twelvetrees as Cameron's daughter tainting the production.