AllMovie

In his heyday, Universal Studios president Carl Laemmle was known derisively as "Uncle Carl" because of the dozens of relatives he hired as employees. Some of these relatives were layabouts: others, like director Edward Laemmle, actually had talent. In Laemmle's Held by the Law, Ralph Lewis plays George Travis, falsely accused of murdering the father of his son-in-law Tom Sinclair (Johnny Walker). The actual culprit was another relative, who killed the old fellow to cover up a theft. Tom and his bride, Travis' daughter Mary (Marguerite de la Motte), conspire to trap the miscreant themselves. Fred Kelsey, the archetypal "dumb detective," does his usual as the gumshoe on the case.