The title of this film is completely misleading. Ain't nobody robbing from the poor to give to the rich in this Roy Rogers western. Instead Roy plays a U.S. Forestry Inspector (they never say Forest Ranger because Roy is not in the regulation Smoky the Bear outfit)who is guarding the evergreen forests and preventing those who want to cut those trees down before its time at Christmas season.
Oldtime movie star Jack Holt plays himself and he's got a lot of evergreens on his land which adjoins the big spread of tycoon Emory Parnell. Parnell wants to corner the Christmas tree market while Holt wants to give his trees away almost at cost and probably get a nice tax write-off thought that isn't mentioned. Parnell has a daughter, Penny Edwards, who goes down to look after Dad's interests, but when Roy sings a few songs, she melts.
Parnell goes down himself and finds his foreman Clifton Young working a whole racket unto himself to cheat both Holt and Parnell. You might remember Young as the skel who tries to blackmail Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage. He's just as much a skunk in Trail of Robin Hood. He died tragically however the following year in a hotel fire, the same year as Jack Holt.
Gordon Jones, later Mike the Cop on the Abbott and Costello show, did a few films with Roy as an amiable oaf of a sidekick named Splinters at this time. He has a little sister in this film, Carol Nugent, who is quite the tomboy and constantly showing Jones up.
It turns out Roy needs a lot of help in this film and he gets it from a whole flock of cowboy heroes of several generations. Herbert J. Yates of Republic got Monte Hale, Rex Allen, Rocky Lane, and Ray Corrigan who were all with his studio and a few from past generations like Kermit Maynard, Tom Keene, Tom Tyler, and William Farnum all pitched in to help old friend Holt rout the bag guys.
I kind of liked seeing all these guys on the screen together as wildly improbable though it was. Then again it was B western from Republic so it can only go one way.
We've seen many a racket operate in the west, but cornering the Christmas Tree trade. How low can you sink?
