Tom Keene's chiseled looks made him a natural for Westerns, but his characters' peaceful ways never really caught on with the audiences attracted by the B Westerns in which he mostly starred. In his six low-budget Western at RKO, he stars as a Texas Ranger reluctantly assigned to bring in a woman (Julie Haydon) when a wealthy ranger is murdered and a note on the body incriminates her. Keene had started his career as an RKO Western star under Robert F. Hill's direction in 1931's Sundown Trail. Both would leave the studio the following year, with Keene's interest in playing a wide variety of roles keeping him in interesting roles for a while. Immediately after leaving RKO, he starred for King Vidor in his personal production Our Daily Bread (1934), now viewed as one of the most important films to deal with the great Depression. His co-star, Julie Haydon, had even less luck at RKO, where she had been hired as a threat to top star Ann Harding. When Harding's career declined, the studio had little for Haydon to do, so she returned to Broadway, where she delivered acclaimed performances in the original productions of The Time of Your Life and The Glass Menagerie.

By Frank Miller