Summary
An inebriate’s public pratfall detonates the corseted composure of Bess Rutherford, hurling her from Midwestern respectability into the phosphorescent maw of Manhattan’s nocturne. She elopes with Jim Carpenter, a velvet-tongued financier who installs her in a velvet-trimmed limbo: engagement rings dangled but never delivered, whispers of marriage deferred by phantom board-meetings and yachting regattas. Their brownstone becomes a gilt-edged cage; mirrors reflect not a bride-to-be but a cautionary silhouette, backlit by neon marquees. Meanwhile, Jack—her collegiate son—romps through ivy-covered courtships until his fiancée’s mother sniffs scandal on the maternal breeze. The revelation ricochets: Jack storms the lover’s lair, pistol in trembling fist; a single shot smears crimson across the damask, Carpenter collapses, Bess—frantic—quaffs crystalline poison. The city tilts, celluloid melts, and she jolts awake on her own chintz sofa, the acrid smell of gunsmoke transmuted to burnt toast, Tom’s contrite sobriety vow hovering like morning mist.
Synopsis
One night at a party, when her drunken husband Tom makes a fool of himself, Bess Rutherford becomes so humiliated that she accepts long-time admirer Jim Carpenter's offer to leave Tom for him. Bess goes to New York with Jim, who persists in postponing their wedding date, forcing her to live as an illicit woman. Bess's son Jack suspects nothing of his mother's circumstances until his fiancée's mother, Mrs. Dexter, asks him to stop seeing her daughter Gladys. Finally learning of Bess's scandalous living conditions, Jack confronts Carpenter, who is secretly hoping to win Gladys, and in their confrontation, Carpenter is shot and killed. Bess, hysterical, drinks poison, but then realizes that the whole scene was a nightmare which ends happily when Tom promises to never drink again.
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