Satire on materialism, with incidental music by Deems Taylor.
Neil McRae, a destitute composer, considers a life of ease with his infatuated piano student Gladys Cady, daughter of a millionaire. When the Cadys visit McRae, it becomes apparent that they are sizing him up as a possible son-in-law. Urged on by his equally poor neighbour Cynthia Mason, who is willing to sacrifice her love for him to ensure the comfort she thinks his genius needs, Neil proposes to Gladys. As he falls asleep after their visit, exhausted from the prosaic work that Cynthia wants to spare him, he dreams, in a series of expressionistic vignettes, of life among the Cadys. From a marriage ceremony portending the pompous life he is to lead in the bosom of this Babbitt-like family, Neil is whisked into the mechanistic business world and then into cliché-ridden domesticity. Having been driven to murder all the Cadys, he is sentenced to serve time in an art factory. Awakened by Cynthia, who realises that she cannot give him up to someone else, Neil now must rid himself of Gladys. Fortuitously, Gladys suddenly appears and giddily releases him from his promise.