Plot
Mimi Glossop (Ginger Rogers) arrives in England to seek a divorce from her geologist husband Cyril (William Austin), whom she hasn't seen for several years. Under the guidance of her domineering and much-married aunt Hortense (Alice Brady), she consults a bumbling and less-than-competent lawyer Egbert Fitzgerald (Edward Everett Horton), who happens to be one of Hortense's previous fiancés. He arranges for her to spend a night at a seaside hotel and to be caught in an adulterous relationship, for which purpose he hires a professional co-respondent, Rodolfo Tonetti (Erik Rhodes). But Egbert forgets to arrange for private detectives to "catch" the couple.
By coincidence, Guy Holden (Fred Astaire) an American dancer and friend of Egbert's, who briefly met Mimi on her arrival in England, and who is now besotted with her, also arrives at the hotel, only to be mistaken by Mimi for the co-respondent she has been waiting for. While they are in Mimi's bedroom, Tonetti arrives, revealing the truth, and holds them "prisoner" to suit the plan. They contrive to escape and dance the night away.
In the morning, after several mistakes with the waiter, Cyril Glossop (William Austin) arrives at the door, so Guy hides in the next room, while Mimi and Tonetti give a show of being lovers. When Cyril doesn't believe them, Guy comes out and embraces Mimi in an attempt to convince him that he is her lover, but to no avail. It is an unwitting waiter (Eric Blore) who finally clears the whole thing up by revealing that Cyril himself is an adulterer, thus clearing the way for Mimi to get a divorce and marry Guy.
Read more about this topic: The Gay Divorcee
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)