However, he soon meets a local girl named Alwina (Josephine Baker) whose personality intrigues him so greatly that he invents a character based on her for his newest (and 'most exciting') novel.

His relation with Alwina serves a dual purpose in that it also angers (or at least highly annoys) his wife Lucie (Germaine Aussey) who has been flirting with the Maharaja of Datane (Jean Galland) back in Paris.

Lucie and Max forgive each other in the end and fall in love again, Alwina returns to Tunisia after the frustrating realization that, as the Maharaja puts it, "Some windows face to the West, and the others to the East."

The film closes with a scene of Alwina and Dar back in Tunisia with their newborn child, with farm animals strewn about Max's mansion.

[citation needed] The image, "Josephine Baker / Prinsesse Tam-Tam", from 1935, was later used by the United States Postal Service on a postage stamp.