Built around, and sustained by the sensuous strains of Ravel's "Bolero," this film loses much of its effect when the rendition of the feature scene fails to come up to the mark. The recurrence of appealing waltzes and tangoes with the accomplished dancing of George Raft, Carole Lombard, and Frances Drake, and the absence of leg extravaganzas and water scenes, combine to make it a picture considerably above the average of musical revues.

Raft's rise from coal miner, gigolo, and cabaret performer, to night club owner is accomplished by his repeated refusal to mix business with pleasure, firing his dancing partners when they interfere with his consuming desire to be famous. Becoming a sensation in London and Paris with Helen (Carole Lombard), he enters the World War as a publicity stunt, expecting the fracas to be ended in a few weeks. Helen loses her hero-worship, and marries an English noble.

Returning from the war with his heart and lungs crippled, Raft rejects the doctor's counsel and continues his dancing. When his new partner fails him on the opening night, Helen consents to substitute, and to dance the Bolero again. Preparing to give an encore, he suffers a heart attack amid the applause, and expires in an unconvincing dressing-room scene.

The insertion of feather-shrouded Sally Rand's box-office appeal adds little to the picture, but her name partly obscures the failings of her unadapted voice and faintly suggestive fan dance. Anachronous are the use of 1934 slang in pre-war times, and the fact that the Bolero was written in 1928.