Summary
In a Manhattan where neon still belonged to the future, Enid Gregory’s nimble fingers ripple across a display-store Steinway, coaxing ragtime into the plate-glass night; her life is a metronomic two-step between rent-day and the next soda-fountain grin. Enter Janet Fenwick—silk-smooth name, tungsten pride—carrying the sulfuric perfume of scandal: father dead by his own hand, fortune embezzled, reputation charred. The boarding-house on West 48th becomes a petri dish of class osmosis: Janet, desperate for oxygen, lands a clerkship through Enid’s recommendation; Enid, galvanized by whispers of ballroom parquet and champagne triads, swallows etiquette like absinthe. A Coney Island excursion tilts the axis: Kent Lloyd, plumbing prince in yachting whites, replaces Billy the song-plugger in Enid’s starved imagination, while Janet’s fiancé Jack Taylor arrives waving the ghost of an affidavit—ink that could resurrect or damn her sire. Enid storms Bruce Tilford’s tower of ledgers, only to be locked in a gilded cage of Persian rugs and predatory silences; Jack crashes the citadel, fists flare, kerosene lamps topple, and the scene erupts into a crimson aria of smoke and sizzling mahogany. Amid collapsing timbers Enid drags the unconscious Tilford to safety, a Prometheus in rolled stockings. Morning finds the document pledged, Lloyd on bended knee promising pipe-wrench partnership, and Enid at the keyboard again—this time playing a newly syncopated future, chords freighted with both soot and stardust.
Synopsis
Enid Gregory plays the piano at a music store on Broadway and is content with her snappy, routine existence until Janet Fenwick, a society girl whose father committed suicide under a cloud of financial disgrace, comes to Enid's boarding-house. Enid gets Janet a job, and Janet teaches Enid society manners, awakening her ambition; and Enid's interest turns from Billy to Kent Lloyd, whom she meets on a beach outing. Jack Taylor, Janet's fiance', informs Janet of an affidavit held by her father's partner, Bruce Tilford, that would clear his name. Enid tries to obtain the paper from Tilford but is trapped in his apartment. There Jack and Bruce engage in a fight, and when a fire breaks out, Enid rescues Bruce. Later, Bruce promises to surrender the paper, and Lloyd proposes to Enid and promises to work his way to a partnership in his father's plumbing company.
Director
