Park Avenue socialite Mary (Norma Shearer) and staid English nobleman, Lord Phillip Rexford (Herbert Marshall) are married as a lark, but she is very happy for several years with her husband and child. But on a trip to the Riviera she meets again an old flame, Tommie Treal (Robert Montgomery), and under the spell of the sea breezes and the Mediterranean moon (a semi-excuse for adultery to keep Queen Norma’s image clean, as this was a post-Production Code film), Mary is the “innocent” victim of a romantic escapade that makes the headlines and the scandal sheets. None of Mary’s explanations can soothe Lord Phillip, reaping the fallout of marrying “down”, and his cold indifference drives Mary, who fights against it (a minor and feeble struggle at best), closer to Tommie. As the two lovers surrender to their ardor, Lord R. learns from his secretary that Mary had been telling the truth, and he calls for her to join him in Cannes with a clean slate. O.K, but as Chief Sky Eagle told John Wayne in Legião Invencível (1949), “too late, Nathan, toooooo late.”
