There is an inn named Asano Ya in the port town, and a beautiful woman works there. Every year, during a local festival, travelling artists and teachers gather from all over the country, including sesame oil sellers and organ grinders. The day before the festival, trouble arises with some horses.
Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.
Based on a Victor Hugo play, and scored with music from the later opera by Giuseppe Verdi, the film tells about a hunchbacked clown whose beautiful daughter falls in love with the lecherous king.
After Hou Yao moved to Singapore in 1940, he continued to work for the Shaw Brothers under Malay Film Productions and made a handful of films, including Bermadu and Hanchor Hati, before being murdered in 1942.
When a small town veterinarian discovers that his just-graduated daughter is a gold-digging elitist, he devises a plan to help her rediscover old-fashioned family values.
Serials usually spawned feature film versions, but with this film, it was the other way around. A 1932 Buck Jones Western, White Eagle was made into a serial nine years later, again starring Jones in the title role, a (supposedly) Native American Pony Express Rider defending his people against a gang of evil Whites.