Fox's immediate follow-up to its successful early-talkie western In Old Arizona was 1929's Romance of the Rio Grande. The story focuses on the Alvarez family of Mexico, specifically fabulously wealthy Don Fernando. Intending to bequeath his vast fortune and estate to his long-estranged grandson Pancho, Don Fernando must contend with his ne'er-do-well nephew Juan.
A modern-day pirate vies with a society playboy for the love of a dancer.
A newspaper publisher's daughter is arrested for speeding. In order to avoid embarrassing her father, since his newspaper is in the midst of an anti-speeding campaign, she uses an assumed name. She is paroled into the custody of an assistant district attorney, who doesn't know who she really is.
Landing at a Chinese port, tough sea captain Bucklin and his passengers are threatened by a marauding war lord, who intends to kill the captain and hold the others hostage as part of his campaign of destruction against all white men.
Gloria Trask, who has risen from a squalid East Side environment to stardom in Costigan's nightclub, is admired by Tom Westcott, detective, and Sam Roberts, a gangster with whom her brother is involved. Andy, threatened by the gang, is forced to pay off, and in a showdown in Gloria's dressing room, Andy shoots Roberts in self-defense. Gloria helps her brother to leave on a South American liner, while Tom forces Roberts' girlfriend Blanche to admit to witnessing the crime. Blanche insists that it was murder, but Tom forces her to admit that Roberts had a gun by accusing her of the killing.
A product of the Bowery, Trent Regan grows up to become a powerful gangster. Regan's girlfriend Angie Miller, hearing that her childhood sweetheart (and Regan's lifelong pal) Mike Cassidy is about to marry Marjorie Church, pays a visit to Mike to offer congratulations. Convinced that Angie is fooling around behind his back, Regan accidentally kills her. A lost film.
Paula, a chorus girl, marries into an aristocratic family. Unfortunately, her husband is a drunk. When he tries to give some liquor to their infant son, she brandishes a pair of scissors at him. He wrestles them away from her, then falls down the stairs and stabs himself. Due to the perjured testimony of the maid and butler, Paula is convicted of murder and sent to jail. Her son, Danny, grows up to be a movie star. There is a controversy surrounding him because he refuses to do his own stunts. The reason he won't take any chances is that he is using all his money to get his mother out of jail. Finally, to redeem himself, he agrees to participate in a charity auto race, but his mother's hearing is scheduled for the race day.
Jeff Farnell, forced by circumstances to take a job on a New York scandal sheet while he awaits the settlement of his claim against a steel company. Job Hardcastle, the hardened city editor of the paper, sends Jeff to get a story on "Mops" Collins, a society divorcée who has been reduced to dancing in a cabaret. Jeff takes pity on Mops, who is dying of consumption, and takes her into his apartment, telling Hardcastle that he could not find her. Afraid of losing his job, Jeff hunts for a big story, finding it when he discovers that Clive Ross-Fayne, a friend he thought lost in the war, has been arraigned on charges of narcotics peddling. (Pamela Short)
The sister of a silver mine owner hires a renegade pilot to fly her to her brother's rescue.
In the desolated wilds is a Trading Post, to which Oliver Thornton went to seek obscurity after being falsely convicted of a crime in the States. Fate brought him a wife, a girl from the wilds, and soon a child, and all was happy until his prison record became known to a villainous trapper who used this information to turn Thorton's wife against him. A lost film.