Clearing the Trail

The audience got two Universal stars for the price of one with this rousing Western: Hoot Gibson and Fred Gilman. The two popular celluloid cowboys played brothers, one a lawman Gibson, the other a rancher Gilman fighting a gang of horse thieves hired by greedy neighbor Captain C.E. Anderson. Arriving from the East, Gibson goes undercover as a ranch hand, deliberately earning a reputation as a coward. Under this convenient guise, the lawman manages to bring the villain and his men to justice, helped in no small way by brother Gilman, Anderson's innocent niece (Dorothy Gulliver) and a local judge (Andrew Waldron). A vivacious WAMPAS Baby Star of 1928, Dorothy Gulliver gave up her screen career in the early 1940s only to make a spectacular comeback as a bored hausfrau picking up young lovers in John Cassavetes' fascinating Faces (1968). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide