This film is not good yet remains strangely watchable, possibly because it can never make up its mind whether it's a comedy, social drama or romance.
Gene Raymond plays the son of an incredibly snooty "What will the neighbours think?" high society family who gets drunk and engaged to a secretary (Ann Sheridan). The family is horrified that he would embarrass them by marrying any person with such a lowly position in society so they convince the girl that he had run out on her. She, unexpectedly, jumps out of a high rise window in response and Raymond, bitter at her suicide, takes off on a cross country trip.
It's when he reaches New Mexico that the story really starts to turn strange. Raymond meets an Apache woman (Sylvia Sidney) and decides to get his vengeance on his family by marrying her, knowing that it will make them a laughingstock among their social crowd. Things will not evolve quite as Raymond had intended and the story will turn unconvincingly romantic in its final chapter.
This is one of those you've got to see it to believe it films. Sylvia Sidney, while attractive, looks nothing like an Indian, aside from wearing braids and an Indian outfit. There is no attempt on the actress's part to assume any kind of accent and, once she presents herself dressed up looking like a white woman she, of course, wows all of those around her. The Gene Raymond character, as gathered from the plot description, is a complete jerk no matter what the screenplay may have him later do to try to redeem himself.
The film's cast, however, is a reasonably impressive one, with Laura Hope Crews and H. B. Warner playing Raymond's parents. (Crews, thicker than a brick, at one moment asks those around her if they couldn't just hide the Indian under a bed somewhere). Ann Sheridan, in a small role at the film's beginning, is somewhat pudgy faced (it wouldn't be until her Warner Brothers contract in another couple of years that they would start to turn her into an "Oomph Girl"). Dramatically, though, the actress is quite effective in her sympathetic role in this film. Paramount would largely waste Sheridan as an actress during her contract years there but this is one of the roles at that studio in which she does shine, albeit briefly.
