Acting
Randolph Scott plays Jim Cleve, one of several volunteers keeping the US-Mexican border safe on behalf of American settlers. Ostensibly the hero, Cleve is actually out-heroed by the film's nominal villain, outlaw leader Jack Kells (Monte Blue). It is Kells who brings about the story's happy ending, sacrificing his own life to ensure the blissful future of young lovers Cleve and Joan Randall (Barbara Fritchie).
Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager Jack Ellery calls in his friend, policeman Bill Murdock, to help him investigate. Bill thinks Jack is offering to let him see the show from an unusual viewpoint after he forgot to get him tickets for the performance, but then they find the corpse of a murdered woman and Bill immediately suspects Eric of the crime.
A wide-eyed working girl wins a $5,000 sweepstakes and plunges into the lush life of New York City, where she meets a bellboy who is more than he seems.
Prison escapee Utah Evans kills Sheriff McClay. Joe Norton was McClay's predecessor and sent Utah to prison. Ma McClay having taken over as Sheriff for her husband, now gets Joe to return. Joe sets out to get Utah and Utah, learning Joe is after him, hopes to get revenge for being sent to prison.
There are plenty of guilty secrets at the school where Hildegarde Withers teaches. When she finds the body of the pretty music teacher, she calls in her old friend Inspector Piper, who promptly arrests the obvious suspect. Clues multiply and everyone looks suspicious as Piper and Miss Withers continue their battle of the sexes.
Gold mining cowboy western romantic melodrama (based on the story by Zane Grey) about a pair of cowboys who find a gold mine in "Thunder Mountain", but have no money to develop it. One of the cowboys rescues a girl on a stagecoach and her grateful father agrees to finance them. Along the way, she pretends to fall in love with one of the cowboys. Thinking he is about to be very rich, he sets out, but upon arrival, he finds that a bad man has stolen the claim and started a town. There, everyone turns on him, including the girl, but luckily, another pretty girl, a barmaid (who is secretly in love with him), sticks by him, and he ends up in a climactic shootout on the mountain where the gold is stashed.
