The film was directed by Edwin Carewe, who produced it for his own motion picture company and adapted the scenario from the play of the same name by Porter Emerson Browne.
Lopez prepares to deprive Jones of the remainder of his cattle and valuables, and kidnap his beloved former sweetheart (Enid Bennett), who is now married to heartless loan shark Morgan Pell (Walter McGrail).
Determined to show his gratitude, the powerful bandit robs the rapacious bank which, in cahoots with Pell, cheats and exploits the locals, and gives the money to Jones.
A year before Mordaunt Hall would receive a byline as The New York Times' first official film critic, an anonymous reviewer, writing for the paper in October 1923, reported that "Blinn seems to take the same Keen enjoyment in playing the part for the screen as he did before the footlights.
In keeping with Beery's by-now-established trademark broad acting style, a greater emphasis was placed on humor, to the extent that the 1941 version is frequently categorized as a comedy.
Between the release of the 1930 and 1941 versions, there was also a semi-disguised one in 1937, West of Shanghai, directed by John Farrow for First National/Warner Bros., which retained most plot elements from Porter Emerson Browne's play, but restructured the setting, character names and other details.
The bandit leader was now a Chinese warlord, General Fang, as seen through the image of Boris Karloff who had already portrayed the villainous Oriental mastermind, Fu Manchu, in 1932's The Mask of Fu Manchu and would play the Chinese sleuth, Mr. Wong, Detective, in a series of five films directed by William Nigh for poverty row Monogram Pictures, starting a few months after West of Shanghai.