The first feature length film to use three-strip Technicolor film. Adapted from a play that was adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's book "Vanity Fair", the film looks at the English class system during the Napoleonic Wars era.
Jonathan Pride is a mild-mannered dance instructor in 1820 Boston. En route to visit relatives, Jonathan is shanghaied by a band of zany pirates and forced to work as a galley boy. When the pirate vessel arrives at the port of Las Palomas, Jonathan, clad in buccaneer's garb, makes his escape. Everyone in Las Palomas, including Governor Alcalde (Frank Morgan) and fetching senorita Serafina (Steffi Duna), assumes that Jonathan is the pirate chieftain, leading to a series of typical comic-opera complications.
Señor Martinez, a famous theater owner, visits a local café in Mexico because of its reputation for good food and to audition the famous dancer who performs there. Martinez tells the café owner that if the dancer is as good as he has heard, he will offer the dancer a contract to perform in his theater. The café's female singer hears about this and is determined that he won't leave the café without her.
Sorority gal Charlotte's innocence is lost after she is raped during a frat party. Confused, terrified and shunned by her peers, she finds solace and the courage to confront her attacker after she is befriended by the leader of a campus women's group.
