Bette Davis stars as a beautiful but vain society woman who, to pay her brother''s gambling debts, marries a financier she does not love--Mr. Skeffington. The marriage does not last, and the former Mrs. Skeffington flits from beau to beau casually leaving a trail of broken hearts. But when she contracts a near-fatal case of diphtheria, her beauty is destroyed by the terrible scars left by the disease. Now middle-aged, scarred and unable to win men''s hearts with her beauty, she finally finds love with the now-blind man she had wed years before--Mr. Skeffington.