The Mysterious Rider
Cast & Crew
Fred Allen
Kent Taylor
Lona Andre
Irving Pichel
Gail Patrick
Warren Hymer
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Nevada Valley ranchers are thrilled to hear that the Boulder Dam project, which will increase the value of their land, has been approved. Crooked lawyer Cliff Harkness informs them that he is the legal owner of their land, however, and has a grant to prove it. When Harkness offers to sell the land back, rancher Wade Benton gathers the money from his neighbors and pays Harkness. Shortly thereafter, financier and rancher Mark King also makes a bid for the same land, and Harkness sells it to him. While Wade is getting a shave by the barber, Gentry, Harkness steals his land sales receipt, throws it in the stove, and puts a blank receipt in Wade's pocket. When later the ranchers learn they are to be evicted, Harkness claims not to have been paid by Wade, and Wade is arrested and put in jail. Deputies begin the eviction process until a "mysterious rider" appears warning them to desist and begins harassing them. The rider is actually Wade, who has found a way to break jail when he pleases. One night, Wade overhears Harkness arguing with Gentry, who found the real receipt and threatens to expose Harkness as a fraud. Harkness kills Gentry, but the "mysterious rider" is blamed for the death. Wade finds the real receipt and brings Harkness to confess in front of ranchers, who have been having a gunfight with deputies. When King discovers he has been deceived, he returns the land to the rightful owners, and his secretary Dorothy, who is in love with Wade, gladly embraces him.
Director
Fred Allen
Cast
Kent Taylor
Lona Andre
Irving Pichel
Gail Patrick
Warren Hymer
Berton Churchill
Niles Welch
Cora Sue Collins
E.h. Calvert
Sherwood Bailey
Clarence Wilson
Buster Miles
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The title of the release dialogue script, was "Zane Grey's Mysterious Rider." Paramount story files at the AMPAS library indicate the negative cost of the film was $116,591.68. According to the film's pressbook, builders Henry Cherry and Ab Strunks were hired from Utah to build a replica of a frontier town. Over fifty-three trick riders appear in the film. The pressbook also indicates that newsreel footage of President Herbert Hoover's authorization of the Boulder Dam project appears in the film. (In 1947, the dam was renamed Hoover Dam in his honor.) Other films based on the same source are the 1921 Mysterious Rider, produced by W. W. Hodkinson Corp., directed by Benjamin B. Hampton and starring Robert McKim and Claire Adams, Paramount's 1927 The Mysterious Rider, directed by John Waters and starring Jack Holt and Betty Jewel, (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.3764 and F2.3765), and Paramount's 1938 version also entitled The Mysterious Rider. (see below).
