The Painted Desert The Painted Desert The Painted Desert is a 1931 American pre-Code film released by Pathé Exchange. Produced by E. B. Derr, it was directed by Howard Higgin, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Tom Buckingham. It starred low-budget Western stars William Boyd (in his pre-Hopalong Cassidy days) and Helen Twelvetrees, and featured a young Clark Gable in his talking film debut. The picture was shot mostly on location in Arizona. 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
USS U. S. Grant (AP-29) and supplies along a route which included calls at San Francisco, California; Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii; Guam; Manila, Philippines; Chinwangtao and Shanghai, China; the Panama Canal Zone, and New York. For many of these years of service in the Pacific, "U. S. Grant" served as the sole source of refrigerated stores from the United States. Her periodic arrivals at Apra Harbor invariably produced a temporary improvement in the diet of Americans living in Guam. On one voyage to Guam, the transport was nearly lost. On the late afternoon of 19 May 1939, "U. S. Grant" ran aground on the dangerous