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Veteran serial star William Desmond earned a rare opportunity to play comedy in this well-received Universal western about an Arizona cowboy forced to live in a San Francisco mansion for a year. The cowboy, Sky Parker, is willed a fortune by an eccentric uncle but can only claim the inheritance after spending a year at the uncle's Nob Hill estate. Parker, who arrives with a retinue of five unruly cowpunchers, gets into all kinds of humorous situations, very much as a certain clan of hillbillies would decades later on television. Sky's evil cousin Miller (Stanhope Wheatcroft) hires a dancing girl, Maize (Ann Forrest), to further lead the cowboy astray, but she of course falls for the charming rustic and refuses to comply. But when Sky asks Maize to marry him, she guiltily takes the next train out of town. Undeterred, Sky chases the train, first in a car which he crashes, then on a stolen motorcycle. Boarding the train at full speed, Sky learns the truth from the repentant Maize, whom he quickly forgives. Directed by the capable Arthur Rosson, Ridin' Pretty was a popular success that did much to re-establish the aging Desmond. Forrest was a former stunt-driver from Denmark, who had earlier starred opposite William Farnum in the Zane Grey western The Rainbow Trail (1918).