Two cowboy friends, Jeff (J. Farrell MacDonald) and Cash (William Farnum), are traveling through the desert in the southwest U.S., when they come upon a baby who has been abandoned in the back of a covered wagon.
Years later the baby has now grown into a young man, Bill Holbrook (William Boyd), who works with his adoptive father on their cattle ranch.
After a shipment of tungsten which was on its way to pay the loan they had taken out to develop the mine is waylaid, Bill works furiously with the miners to replace it with another load.
Everyone believes the mine sabotage is the work of Cash, but it turns out to have been an act of jealousy on the part of Rance, who confesses, leaving the two old friends to reconcile, and their two children to marry.
[7] Higgin was familiar with the area, having worked in and around Flagstaff, Arizona as a lumberjack prior to his entering the film industry.
Tragedy struck the production shortly after filming began when the fourteen-month-old baby playing the role of the infant Bill Holbrook, died while on location.
[18] In the first week of November the cast and crew returned from location in Arizona to finish the interior scenes on the studio lot in Hollywood.
Motion Picture Magazine thought the film was "worth seeing", and complimented the acting, the message and the cinematography.
The Painted Desert has seen numerous budget public domain label releases on VHS and DVD.
In 2019, Kino Lorber released it alongside The Pay-Off (1930) and The Silver Horde (1930) on their "RKO Classic Adventures" Blu-ray and DVD.
[33] These transfers were restored by Lobster Films of France, but inexplicably The Painted Desert is still in its truncated form, despite its missing scenes being present in the extant 1938 remake.
However, Gable had been a horseman since his early years, and merely took several lessons in Griffith Park prior to the commencement of filming in order to hone his skills.
[20] The 1938 remake was directed by David Howard and starred George O'Brien, Laraine Johnson, and Ray Whitley.