Directed by: Howard Higgin

Starring: William Boyd, Helen Twelvetrees, William Farnum, J. Farrell MacDonald, Clark Gable, Charles Sellon, Edmund Breese

STORY

Two cowboys, Cash Holbrook and Jeff Cameron, are traveling through the Arizona desert when they make an extraordinary discovery. At an abandoned wagon they find an infant boy — alone and apparently the sole survivor of whatever tragedy befell his family.

The two men take responsibility for the child, but almost immediately begin arguing over who should raise him. Cash calls the boy Bill. Jeff wants to call him Dan. What begins as a disagreement grows into a bitter feud that will divide the two men for years.

Cash ultimately raises the boy as Bill Holbrook, played as a young man by William Boyd. Bill grows into an honorable, levelheaded cowboy who wants nothing more than to end the ridiculous feud that has poisoned the lives of the two older men.

That becomes considerably more complicated when Bill meets Jeff's beautiful daughter Mary Ellen, played by Helen Twelvetrees.

The children of the feuding families fall in love.

Then someone else enters the picture.

His name is Rance Brett.

And the young actor playing him is Clark Gable.

Rance works for Jeff Cameron and has designs on Mary Ellen himself. When Bill discovers tungsten deposits and begins developing a mining operation, Rance's jealousy and ambition turn increasingly dangerous. He manipulates the longstanding feud, attempts to sabotage Bill's success and proves willing to go much further than anyone expects to get Bill out of his way.

The result is a classic early sound Western filled with feuding ranchers, romance, mining, sabotage, gunplay and spectacular Arizona landscapes.

But today, The Painted Desert carries another enormous piece of movie history.

This is Clark Gable's first speaking role in a motion picture — his sound-screen debut.

Before It Happened One Night. Before Mutiny on the Bounty. Before San Francisco. Before Gone with the Wind. Before Rhett Butler ever looked at Scarlett O'Hara and told her exactly what he did — or didn't — give a damn about, there was Rance Brett.

Gable isn't yet the polished, mustachioed King of Hollywood audiences would come to know. He's young, rough, unshaven and playing the villain.

But he's unmistakably Clark Gable.

And that makes The Painted Desert much more than an early Western.

We're watching a movie star being born.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
CLARK GABLE SPEAKS!

This is the big one.

The Painted Desert marked Clark Gable's sound-screen debut.

Gable had appeared briefly in silent films during the 1920s, generally in uncredited parts. But The Painted Desert gave movie audiences something entirely different — the chance to actually hear and see the future King of Hollywood performing a substantial screen role.

And he wasn't the hero.

He was the bad guy.

BEFORE HE WAS THE KING OF HOLLYWOOD

Gable plays Rance Brett, a rough, jealous and increasingly dangerous cowboy who becomes William Boyd's romantic and business rival.

There is no elegant tuxedo.

No perfectly groomed Rhett Butler mustache.

No MGM superstar polish.

Gable is scruffy, aggressive and villainous — and yet the screen presence that would make him one of Hollywood's biggest stars is already remarkably difficult to miss.

ONE MOVIE CHANGED HIS DIRECTION

Gable's appearance in The Painted Desert helped move his movie career forward at exactly the right moment.

AFI records that Gable's agent, Minna Wallis — sister of producer Hal Wallis — introduced him to producer E. B. Derr while Derr was casting the picture in Los Angeles. Gable landed the role of Rance Brett, and his sound-screen career was underway.

Soon afterward, MGM came calling.

By the end of 1931, Gable had appeared opposite some of Hollywood's biggest actresses and was rapidly becoming one of the hottest new personalities in motion pictures.

WILLIAM BOYD BEFORE HOPALONG CASSIDY

Gable isn't the only future Western legend here.

William Boyd stars as Bill Holbrook.

A few years later, Boyd would become forever identified with Hopalong Cassidy, eventually playing the character in dozens of films and later becoming one of early television's enormous stars.

So The Painted Desert gives us two fascinating careers at very different turning points: the future King of Hollywood beginning his talking-picture career and the future Hopalong Cassidy before finding the role that would define his life.

SHOT IN THE REAL PAINTED DESERT

The title wasn't merely advertising.

According to AFI, approximately 90 percent of the movie was filmed on location in Arizona, including the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, Dinosaur Canyon and Tuba City.

For an early sound production, that was particularly ambitious. Early talkies were frequently confined to controlled studio environments because sound-recording equipment made location filmmaking difficult.

The Painted Desert went outside.

Way outside.

THEY WERE WRITING IT WHILE THEY WERE MAKING IT

Here's one for independent filmmakers everywhere.

AFI records that while Howard Higgin supervised construction of the village sets in Arizona, portions of the film's dialogue and continuity were being written on location.

So this wasn't simply a carefully locked screenplay being transported into the desert.

Parts of the movie were evolving while the production itself was underway.

A DANGEROUS LOCATION PRODUCTION

The production's spectacular desert setting came with genuine danger.

During filming in Dinosaur Canyon, a large explosive charge used for a scene produced a much more violent blast than anticipated. Contemporary accounts report that rocks and debris showered the location, injuring members of the production and director Howard Higgin.

Gable and William Boyd were near the blast but escaped serious injury.

Watching the film today, those rugged landscapes aren't Hollywood backdrops.

The company was genuinely out there making the movie.

HELEN TWELVETREES WAS A MAJOR STAR

Modern audiences may come to The Painted Desert primarily because of Gable and Boyd, but Helen Twelvetrees received major billing and was an established leading lady of the early sound era.

Her wonderfully memorable surname wasn't a Hollywood invention, either — Twelvetrees was her married name.

She became especially associated with emotionally intense dramas during the pre-Code period and was a significant star during the early 1930s.

TWO FATHERS, ONE BABY AND ONE VERY LONG FEUD

The movie begins with a premise that almost sounds like comedy: two cowboys discover an abandoned infant and immediately start fighting over what to call him and who gets to raise him.

But that argument becomes the foundation of an entire generational feud.

Years later, the child they fought over becomes the person most determined to reconcile them.

And naturally, falling in love with the other man's daughter doesn't make that job any easier.

THE TALKIES WERE STILL LEARNING TO TALK

The Painted Desert arrived only a few years after synchronized dialogue revolutionized the motion-picture industry.

TCM notes that the movie reflects that fascinating transitional period when Hollywood was still learning how to make talking pictures. Dialogue had suddenly become one of cinema's biggest attractions, and filmmakers were eager to give audiences plenty of it.

For Clark Gable, that technological revolution arrived at exactly the right time.

His voice would become nearly as recognizable as his face.

PATHÉ WAS ABOUT TO BECOME PART OF RKO

The Painted Desert was produced and initially released by Pathé Exchange.

Then Hollywood business history intervened.

AFI records that RKO took over Pathé shortly after the film's release, with the acquisition occurring on January 29, 1931. The picture subsequently became part of the RKO-Pathé library.

The movie therefore survives at an interesting crossroads not only in Gable's career but in Hollywood studio history.

AINTOID: GABLE DIDN'T STAY A VILLAIN FOR LONG

1931 became an extraordinary breakthrough year for Clark Gable.

After The Painted Desert, audiences saw him in films including The Easiest Way, The Secret Six, Dance, Fools, Dance, Night Nurse and A Free Soul.

Hollywood quickly figured out what it had.

Within only a few years he would win the Academy Award for It Happened One Night and become one of the biggest movie stars on Earth.

AINTOID: THE MUSTACHE WASN'T THERE YET

Anyone expecting the familiar Clark Gable image may need a second look.

The young Gable in The Painted Desert doesn't yet have the famous mustache that would become part of his screen identity.

Instead we get a rougher, younger and considerably less polished Gable.

It makes the movie feel almost like discovering an early photograph of someone before the world knew who he was.

AINTOID: TWO FUTURE SCREEN ICONS IN THE SAME DESERT

There's something wonderful about watching William Boyd and Clark Gable together with hindsight.

One would become Hopalong Cassidy, one of the most famous Western heroes in American popular culture.

The other would become the King of Hollywood.

Neither had yet reached the role or status that would make him immortal.

AIN audiences get to meet them before the rest of history happens.

AINTOID: THE OFFICIAL RELEASE

AFI records the official United States release of The Painted Desert as January 18, 1931.

And with that release, movie audiences heard Clark Gable speak on the screen for the first time.