An average Buck Jones oater from Columbia Pictures, Forbidden Trail featured a girl newspaper publisher, Mary Middleton (Barbara Weeks), forced into writing sympathetic editorials about corrupt political boss "Cash" Karger (Wallis Clark). A former ranch foreman, Tom Devlin (Jones) rescues the girl and her mother (Mary Carr) from a fire set by Karger but is then framed in the murder of a rustler (Albert J. Smith). Aided by his horse, Silver, Tom breaks out of jail and collects enough evidence to bring Karger and his gang to justice. Studio records list Forbidden Trail as a 1932 release but the film was not widely distributed until 1933 and didn't open in New York until November of 1936. By then, Jones had left Columbia in favor of Universal.