AllMovie

Officially a western, Little Red Decides was essentially a comedy with melodramatic undertones. The title character, played by juvenile actress Barbara Connelly, is an orphan girl who is rescued from starvation by soft-hearted cowboys Tom Gilroy (Jack Curtis) and Two-Pair Smith (Walter Perry). The boys deliver the girl to the home of Colonel Allison (Frederick Vroom), apparently for no other reason than that the Colonel looks like a grandfather. Comporting herself in a tomboyish fashion all around the Colonel's ranch, Little Red ends up falling in a horse trough and contacting pneumonia. San Francisco physician Dr. Kirk (George Pearce) forcibly removes Little Red to a parsonage and declares that the hoydenish heroine would be better off under a woman's care, whereupon Tom Gilroy is chosen by lot to find a bride who would qualify as the kid's foster mother. Every eligible female in the territory turns Tom down flat, prompting Allison's Chinese cook Duck Sing (Goro Kino) to "kidnap" Little Red from the parsonage and return her to the Colonel. In the end, it is Little Red who chooses her ideal "Mama" -- the certifiably male Duck Sing!