Q:Build a movie plot around this: What does Dan tell Oliver? He has to stop the takeover of the shipping line.
A:
One week before her next society dinner, Millicent Jordan (Billie Burke) receives word that Lord and Lady Ferncliffe, whom she and her husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore), a New York shipping magnate, had met in England the previous year, have accepted her invitation. Overjoyed by this social coup, Millicent is oblivious to Oliver's lack of enthusiasm about the dinner and her daughter Paula's (Madge Evans) preoccupation about the impending return of her fiance, Ernest DeGraff (Phillips Holmes), from Europe. Millicent fusses about finding an "extra man" for her single female guest, former stage star Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler), who resides in Europe.Meanwhile, Oliver faces distressing news about his shipping business, which has been struck hard by the Depression. Carlotta, an aging retired actress and former lover of Oliver, visits Oliver at his office and asks him to buy her stock in the company, but he does not have the money. Dan Packard (Wallace Beery), a mining magnate, stops by long enough for Oliver to ask him to buy some company stock. Dan agrees only to consider the proposition, he then brags to his wife Kitty (Jean Harlow) that he will take the shipping business through deceit.Unknown to Dan, Oliver has convinced Millicent to invite the Packards to her dinner with the hopes that it will increase Dan's wish to buy the stock. Dan's young trophy-wife, the ill-mannered but socially ambitious Kitty (Jean Harlow), eagerly has accepted. Although he at first refuses to go, Dan, who believes that he will soon be appointed to a Cabinet post, changes his mind about the dinner when he finds out that the Ferncliffes, the richest couple in England, are also invited. Also unknown to Dan, one of Millicent's other guests, Dr. Wayne Talbot (Edmund Lowe), has been having an affair with Kitty while pretending to be tending to her feigned illnesses.On the eve of her dinner, Millicent, still short an extra man, telephones Larry Renault (John Barrymore), a washed-up silent movie star, and extends him a last-minute...