The Painted Desert Reviews

Farnum and MacDonald stumble across infant Boyd in an abandoned covered wagon. Farnum adopts the baby, igniting a feud between the two men that continues for many years. Boyd returns from college with an engineering degree and tries to settle the bad blood between his father and his old friend. The young man starts a tungsten mine and falls for MacDonald's daughter, Twelvetrees, which sets off a battle with her other suitor, Gable. Gable blows up Boyd's mine, and there follows a showdown between the two men. Boyd comes out unscathed, marries Twelvetrees and brings Farnum and MacDonald together. This was one of the small group of westerns that Boyd did before his Hopalong Cassidy fame, and it was one of Gable's first appearances on the silver screen. The outstanding element of this film is Ed Snyder's breathtaking cinematography.