Barbara Stanwyck moves to the right side of the law in this pre-Code exploration of ethics and plays the capable Lorna Hart, who is training to be a nurse. In a series of realistic hospital scenes, the medical world is established as Hippocratically sound. However, when the code of medical ethics is flaunted, Nurse Hart finds her personal values at odds with her professional ethics: "Oh, ethics, ethics, ethics! That's all I've heard since I came into this business. Isn't there any humanity in it?"

When Lorna Hart takes a private post caring for Mrs. Richey's two young children, her suspicion that they are being slowly starved to death brings her in conflict with the medical world, as well as with that essential backbone of society, motherhood ("I'm a dypsomaniac and proud of it" Mrs. Richey). The family doctor and Mrs. Richey, in their pursuit of further riches, have strayed away from Basic American Values, and as a result the world is topsy-turvy. The family home, with its non-stop drunken jazz-age parties, is an image of moral bankruptcy, while a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) plays good Samaritan (with unusual tactics). Clark Gable, in one of only two roles for Warner Brothers, portrays a chauffeur who, in his climb up the social ladder, takes a few too many villainous steps.