Summary
Myra Hastings, Manhattan’s most bewitching predator in pearls, treats courtship like blood-sport: she stalks, she baits, she bags. Kent Whitney—gullible heir to an oil fortune—becomes her newest trophy until jilted admirer Bob Harkness slips him a dossier on her capricious heart. Smarting, Kent concocts a counter-ambush, luring Myra to the family’s ramshackle country house where Dad cracks flatulent jokes, Mom languishes beneath a canine snowstorm, and the silverware is tin. Expecting champagne chivalry, Myra collides with vulgar farce; her humiliation is instant, viral, exquisite. She retaliates by staging a sham wedding—complete with rented parson, forged vows, and a desertion note that leaves Kent legally single but existentially gutted. Guilt ricochets; Kent’s pursuit becomes pilgrimage. On a dawn-slick pier he pleads for bona-fide matrimony, offering his name as both penance and promise. Myra, stripped of artifice, confronts the mirror her schemes have cracked; the film ends on a trembling maybe—two silhouettes bargaining for redemption in the salt-gray light.
Synopsis
After wealthy young socialite Myra Hastings ensnares her latest victim, Kent Whitney, the son of an "oil can millionaire," Bob Harkness, one of her rejected suitors, warns Kent of Myra's flirtatious and fickle nature. Together they concoct a scheme to teach her a lesson. Kent invites Myra home to meet his family, and she goes, expecting to find an atmosphere of elegance and refinement. Instead, she is greeted by Kent's eccentric father, who affronts her with crude jokes; Kent's mother is introduced reclining on a couch, surrounded by yapping dogs. Upon discovering that the evening was a ruse, Myra decides to retaliate. She hires a fake minister, pretends to marry Kent and then deserts him, leaving behind a message explaining that the ceremony was a farce. Kent pursues Myra and persuades her that a real marriage is in order.
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