On a voyage through the tropics, Johnny (Joel McCrea), visits an idyllic island and falls madly in love with Luana (Dolores del Rio), the beautiful daughter of the local chieftain. Their romance is threatened when Luana is fated to be sacrificed to the volcano god. She is faced with a seemingly impossible decision - save her people from the erupting volcano or run away with her true love. Is their passion strong enough to survive this cruel fate?

Bird Of Paradise was inspired by Richard Walton Tully's Broadway play of 1912, which also spawned the 1930 Rudolf Friml musical Luana. Lavishly filmed in Hawaii, Bird Of Paradise is an explosive narrative of romance, tragedy and forbidden love.

Having inherited the warhorse stage piece BIRD OF PARADISE from his predecessor William LeBaron, RKO Radio production chief David O. Selznick opted to do the property up brown, hoping to transform the Richard Walton Tully original into RKO's "prestige" offering of 1932. Joel McCrea stars as a handsome South Seas soldier of fortune who falls in love with Dolores Del Rio, the daughter of a Polynesian native chieftain. Alas, their idyllic romance is destined to come to a sudden and violent end: tribal custom decrees that Del Rio is to be sacrificed to the local volcano. After initial resistance, the heroine nobly resigns herself to her fate, realizing that there is no place for her in her white lover's civilization. A more conservative (and far less costly) version of BIRD OF PARADISE was filmed in 1952, with Jeff Chandler and Debra Paget.