Richard Dix plays a big city gambler wanted for murder who attempts to redeem himself for the love of a minister's daughter in Shooting Straight (1930). This tale of retribution and redemption was Dix's third film for RKO Radio Pictures and only his fifth talkie; previously employed by Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount, the strapping Minnesotan (born Ernest Carleton Brimmer - he took his stage name from that of a dead friend) had been an estimable silent screen presence in such films as The Ten Commandments (1923) and The Vanishing American (1925) but his speaking voice was deemed poor by critics at the time of his sound debut in Nothing But the Truth (1929). Despite a hefty raise from the studio brass, Dix felt his prospects at Paramount were limited and signed instead with RKO, where his old friend William LeBaron had been appointed as head of production. The actor's comeback was secured with the talking whodunit Seven Keys to Baldpate (1929) and the comedy Lovin' the Ladies (1930) but Shooting Straight allowed Dix the opportunity to again play a character as adept with his fists as with his mind - RKO advertised the film as "A Real Two-Fisted Picture with a He-Man Star." Having weathered the transition from silent to talking films, Dix no doubt felt a measure of vindication when his next role, as frontiersman Yancey Cravat in RKO's Academy Award-winning adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel Cimarron (1930), earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

By Richard Harland Smith