Hittin' the Trail
Cast & Crew
R. N. Bradbury
Tex Ritter
"white Flash"
Jerry Bergh
Tommy Bupp
Earl Dwire
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
As Tex Randall and his sidekick Hank prepare to ride into the town of Rawhide, a rider, who is being pursued, asks to trade his exhausted horse for one of theirs. Tex complies, and the rider promises to repay him. The sheriff of Rawhide and his deputy, seeing the exhausted horse, accuse Tex of being The Tombstone Kid, the man whom they were pursuing. The sheriff then arrests Tex for the attempted murder of wealthy horse trader and saloon owner James Clark and for plotting the jailbreak of the Kid's horse thieves. The real Tombstone Kid watches the arrest from behind a tree, then rides off. In town, Clark tells the sheriff that Tex is not the Kid and, learning that Tex is a horse trader, invites him to look at his horses for a potential deal. In reality, Clark wants to use Tex to get a herd of stolen horses across the border. After Tex looks over the horses, he meets Billy Reed, a boy playing sheriff with his German shepherd "Smokey," and Billy's older sister Jean. Meanwhile, Dad Reed, Billy and Jean's father, refuses to sell Clark his canyon land, where rustlers can easily take horses across the border, because he thinks that the railroad may someday want the land for a cutoff. After Tex gets a job singing at Clark's saloon, Clark stakes Tex at the roulette table. After Tex wins due to manipulation of the wheel, Clark sells him his herd. When Jean sees Tex and Hank driving the horses across her father's land, she invites Tex to dinner, after which Reed, having taken a liking to Tex, proposes that he could save himself a long trip to market and allow Tex's thin stock to graze, if they traded herds. When Clark's men report the trade, Clark sends them to capture Tex's herd and takes the sheriff to arrest Reed for stealing his horses. After Clark's men shoot Hank, who suffers a head wound that is only a "crease," and capture the horses, Jean confronts Tex and calls him a horse thief. Unable to convince her otherwise, Tex finds Clark in a shack at the canyon. A fight begins, and as one of Clark's men is about to shoot Tex, the Tombstone Kid, who has returned, shoots the man. The Kid orders Clark to draw up a bill of sale for the horses and a signed confession clearing Reed. In town, Tex and the Kid present Clark's confession. After the sheriff suffers a flesh wound as Clark and his men attempt to leave town, the sheriff releases the Kid's men from jail and deputizes them and Tex. The deputies chase Clark and his men, who try to lead the horses across the border. As Tex bests Clark in a fight, the Kid shoots a man who is about to shoot Tex. Tex then reveals that he is really a representative of a railroad interested in buying the canyon. Jean apologizes to Tex, who says, to her delight, that he plans to stay around for awhile.
Director
R. N. Bradbury
Cast
Tex Ritter
"white Flash"
Jerry Bergh
Tommy Bupp
Earl Dwire
Charles King
Snub Pollard
Edward Cassidy
Jack Smith
Archie Ricks
Heber Snow
Ray Whitley And His Range Ramblers
Phelps Bros.
Ken Card
Tex Ritter's Tornadoes
Smokey
Crew
Frederick Bain
Robert N. Bradbury
Everett Cheetham
Glenn Cook
Robert Emmett
Edward F. Finney
Corson Jowett
Al Lane
Harry Miller
Lindsley Parsons
Lindsley Parsons
Lindsley Parsons
Gus Peterson
Norman Phelps
Tex Ritter
Frank Sanucci
Frank Sanucci
Rudy Sooter
Glen Strange
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, filming was scheduled to start at Kernville, CA, but instead, it began at International Studio. No information has been located to determine whether any location shooting was done at Kernville. This was the first film of Jerry Bergh, an eighteen-year-old New York debutante and socialite. While screen credits list Corson Jowett with sound recording, production charts in Hollywood Reporter credit Cliff Ruberg. According to a pressbook in the copyright descriptions, the Range Ramblers, consisting of Ray Whitley, Ken Card and the three Phelps brothers, Norman, Earl and Willie, was a nationally known radio band, which made their screen debut in this film. This was also the first film for Tex Ritter's Tornadoes, who had also been featured on the radio. Variety, in their review, complained that the film was "probably one of Tex Ritter's worst" and characterized the lines of the film's dialogue as "some of the tritest tripe ever heard on screen." Modern sources list the following additional cast members: Oscar Gahan, Francis Walker, George Morrell and Joe Weaver.
