Scarlet River 1933

The West opens with a dusty, horizon-wide moment where a covered wagon comes to a stop and the couple inside discovers there is no water to speak of. A flashy limousine cuts through the scene, its arrival followed by a crowd eager to sell oil leases, turning a remote landscape into a bustling, chaotic sales floor. No matter where they go, the next angle or location is smothered by the stubborn, comic reality of life on the road, and the Hollywood cross-country trek becomes the final, exasperating straw.

Back at the studio restaurant, a colleague shows Tom Baxter, Tom Keene a photo of the Scarlet River Ranch, which is about to be returned with an unsolicited scenario. The image dissolves into the live ranch, where the mailman struggles to shove a returned manuscript into the mailbox. The eager author, Ulysses Mope, Roscoe Ates, gallops up and then falls off his horse. The mailman explains the ranch’s urgent trouble: Miss Judy must renew the note or the lender will foreclose.

Foreman Jeff, Lon Chaney Jr, approves Buck’s chewing tobacco and tasks him with looking after the ranch’s horse. Ulysses narrates the plot of his own movie—about a foreman who plans to steal a ranch and force the owner to marry him—unaware that he’s outlining Jeff’s real situation, which only fuels Jeff’s anger toward the pair. Judy, Dorothy Wilson, enters and Jeff pressure-tests the idea of marriage as the solution to their financial woes. Ulysses interrupts with a studio letter about using the ranch as a location, further entangling everyone in a web of ambition and necessity.

The film crew arrives with a parade of vehicles, and Tom is drawn to Judy even as he distrusts Jeff. The two men clash in the glare of the set: Jeff accuses Tom of being a “powder puff actor,” but the stunt director arranges for Jeff to perform a stunt first; he fails, and Tom steps in to do it correctly, earning Judy’s admiration. In the bunkhouse, a fight erupts and Tom swiftly knocks Jeff out.

Later, Judy watches a kiss on set and confesses to Tom that she could never act intimately in front of an audience. Ulysses interferes again, and the director orders Benny to bring the “job stick”—a slender wood-and-cord device that can entangle Ulysses in his vest. If he can escape without breaking it, he’ll have a job.

Tom offers to enroll Buck in a good private school and promises monthly visits, and he shares a quiet moment with Judy that leads to a kiss. She slaps him, they apologize, and the moment softens into a cautious understanding.

That night, Tom trails Jeff and uncovers something more sinister: Jeff seems to be poisoning the water and rustling cattle. If a veterinarian finds no poison, Jeff could be arrested. Tom then confronts Buck about his smoking and his disrespect for Judy; Judy walks in as Buck lies about what provoked the punishment, and she flies into a rage.

On the set, Buck has given up smoking and apologizes to Tom. McPherson, the banker, has kidnapped Judy and, allegedly, Jeff. He sends the Dummy with a note; Tom intercepts, but the note arrives too late—the message states that Judy will be killed unless Tom and his crew leave Scarlet River. Dummy rides to the hideout and slips inside through a back window—it’s Tom in disguise—so Tom can tell Judy about Jeff. They run, but Judy is captured.

Buck and Ulysses keep watch: Buck heads toward the filmmakers, while Ulysses heads for the sheriff. McPherson plans to stage Tom’s fall from a cliff as an accidental death. Tom tells Judy to keep running when he makes a break for freedom. The crew descends with manpower, blanks, and a live grenade, stopping McPherson’s men. McPherson grabs Judy, and Jeff follows, insisting that she be released. McPherson kills Jeff in the struggle. Tom launches himself from horseback through a window, knocking McPherson unconscious.

The sheriff steps in to thank them for their help. When Judy asks Buck what he’s doing there, Tom declares that he and Buck are partners. Tom and Judy walk off together, Tom’s arm around her shoulders. In the final beat, Ulysses finally detaches the job stick, and the director cries out for Benny, signaling the story’s last, chaotic remnant of on-set energy.