Joan Crawford is Harriet Craig, a sophisticated yet dictatorial woman who runs her household with an iron fist, driving her staff to distraction and treating her husband, Walter (Wendell Corey), like an object, and her cousin, Clare (K.T. Stevens), like a slave. When Walter is offered an opportunity to work in Japan, Harriet schemes to keep him home, weaving a web of lies that also affects Clare's romantic affairs and Harriet's relationship with her servants.