[3][4] Peter Denver, a renowned Broadway producer, is attending a cocktail party hosted by the viciously haughty and celebrated actress Carlotta "Lottie" Marin and her quiet husband Brian Mullen when he meets Nancy "Nanny" Ordway.

She convinces a reluctant Peter to persuade his wife, Iris—another famous actress, who is temporarily out of town—to agree to Nanny's use of the couple's apartment to write in during the day.

Nanny had recently stayed for a time with her uncle and then moved in with a woman roommate, whose brother she evidently had agreed to marry.

A series of flashbacks reveal that Nanny was craftily piecing together a scheme that would help her both to climb the social ladder and to later conceal the identity of her secret lover by falsely implicating Peter.

In the end, Brian can no longer keep silent and reveals to his friend Peter that he was Nanny's secret lover, but swears that he did not kill her.

Studio head Darryl Zanuck assigned the project to Nunnally Johnson, who worked on it after writing the script for How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).

However, the role of Nanny Ordway would ultimately afford a brief cinematic comeback to former child star (at 20th Century Fox) Peggy Ann Garner.

"[12] Johnson did successfully recruit George Raft, known for his gangster roles, to play against type as an investigating police officer.

George Raft as a poker-faced detective acts with flat-toned indifference, too, and Gene Tierney and Reginald Gardiner barely manage to live through their roles.

He refers to some "marvelous dialogue", noting "the film moves along at a nice, steady clip" and stating that "it's enough fun that most viewers will overlook …[the] flaws".