AllMovie

One of Universal's better Blue Streak Westerns, Red Hot Leather starred the company's number two cowboy hero at the time, Jack Hoxie. (The lackadaisical Hoot Gibson was Universal's premiere Western star of the 1920s.) Unlike Gibson, Hoxie was not much of an actor but looked good on a horse, which was all this story of a rancher who discovers an oil deposit on his land called for. Returning from the East where he has tried in vain to borrow money to save his father's ranch, Hoxie's Jack Lane meets nurse Ellen Rand (Ena Gregory), herself en route to care for the elder Lane (William Malan). A neighbor, Morton Kane (William H. Turner), meanwhile, has discovered oil on the Lane property, a fact he attempts to keep to himself. When Jack enters the rodeo hoping to earn enough money to save the ranch, Kane has him abducted. The intrepid cowboy escapes in Kane's car, wins the rodeo, saves the ranch, and marries his father's nurse. Leading lady Ena Gregory, an Australian, appeared in four Westerns opposite Hoxie, married his director, Albert S. Rogell, and changed her name briefly to Marian Douglas.