Having signed up with Columbia to re-create his stage role in Death of a Salesman, Cameron Mitchell was obliged to earn his keep in such potboilers as Smuggler's Gold. Mitchell plays Mike Sloan, the fiancé of Susan Clarke (played by future Gunsmoke regular Amanda Blake). Susan's uncle is supposedly respectable skipper Pop Hodges (Carl Benton Reid). In truth, lovable old Pop is a ruthless smuggler, who strong-arms Mike into retrieving a sunken cache of stolen gold. Filmgoers with long memories were able to discern resemblances between Smuggler's Gold and the 1933 melodrama I Cover the Waterfront.