Plot
Wealthy industrialist Alfred Borden (Walter Connolly) has problems both at work and at home. His employees at Amalgamated Pump are making demands that may drive the business he has built up from nothing into bankruptcy, and his son Tim (Tim Holt) has lost a major customer through neglect (he prefers playing polo). On his birthday, Borden's secretary gives him a loud tie as a gift, but when he goes home to his Fifth Avenue mansion, he finds nobody there but the servants. His unfaithful wife Martha (Verree Teasdale), his daughter Katherine (Kathryn Adams), and Tim have all forgotten or do not care.
Feeling lonely, he goes to Central Park, where he meets Mary Grey (Ginger Rogers), a young, out-of-work woman. Seeing that she has only a meager meal to last the day, he invites her to dine with him at a fancy nightclub. They get drunk, start dancing, and are spotted by Martha and her boyfriend. The next morning, he awakes with a hangover and a black eye, to discover that he had apparently invited Mary to spend the night in a guest room.
Seeing the reaction this elicits from his formerly indifferent family, he concocts a scheme: he hires Mary to pretend to be his mistress. He neglects his company, forcing his son to take up the slack. Tim comes up with fresh new ideas to save the firm. Meanwhile, Borden and Mary go out every night, supposedly partying to all hours, though they are actually just driven around by the ardently Communist chauffeur Mike (James Ellison). Embarrassed by the resulting newspaper gossip column items and shunned by her friends, Martha first calls family psychiatrist Dr. Kessler (Louis Calhern), but he finds nothing wrong with her now-cheerful and carefree husband. She starts staying home, plotting ways to drive Mary out. She has Tim try to buy her off, but that fails. Tim makes no effort to hide his contempt for the interloper, but eventually, he falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Mary tries to help Katherine, who is in love with an unnoticing Mike.
Finally, Mary can no longer continue with the charade and tearfully confesses the truth. Katharine shows up and announces she has married Mike, who has decided to quit and open a repair shop. At first, Martha is aghast, but then Borden reminds her that they started their own marriage in about the same way, and she grudgingly accepts her new son-in-law. Borden then retreats to his bedroom, but Martha invites him into hers. Mary leaves, but Tim finds her, picks her up, and carries her back into the mansion. When a policeman tries to interfere, Mary tells him to mind his own business.
Read more about this topic: 5th Ave Girl
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)