Mike Wayne Kirk Douglas is a middle-aged motion-picture producer whose career has fallen on hard times, and he struggles to bring a new Hollywood project to life. Accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, he pampers his daughter January Deborah Raffin, giving her an expensive education in Europe and every luxury money can buy. When she returns to America, she longs to be close to her father, hoping to share in his world even as his professional fortunes waver.
Needing capital, Mike enters into a loveless marriage with Deidre Milford Granger Alexis Smith, one of the world’s wealthiest women who has already endured multiple marriages and insists on running things her own way. Deidre’s cold, arrogant presence weighs on the household, and she is secretly involved in a lesbian affair, a fact that wounds January and stirs trouble behind the scenes. Deidre tries to pull January toward her cousin David Milford George Hamilton, a charming but persistent ladies’ man who always seems to get his own way. He eventually persuades January to share a bed with him, only to discover that she is a virgin, complicating the fragile web of loyalties and desires surrounding the family.
Seeking guidance, January turns to Linda Riggs Brenda Vaccaro, an old friend now a free-spirited magazine editor who urges her to write a book and embrace a life of independence and exploration. Yet January finds herself drawn to Tom Colt David Janssen, a hard-drinking, aging novelist who is both witty and abrasive, and who becomes a staunch adversary of Mike’s worldview. Mike’s resentment simmers as he watches Colt become a powerful rival in January’s heart, and when he discovers them together in a Beverly Hills hotel cabin, he unleashes a furious punch at Colt, insisting that January must choose between her lover and her father.
The conflict escalates as Deidre’s demands and insults push Mike toward divorce, and the two agree to separate, only to meet a tragic fate when their airplane crashes, killing them both. The loss leaves January shattered, and she turns to Colt for consolation, only to find him turning away when she needs him most, leaving her to face the consequences of the wreckage alone.
In the wake of these upheavals, January learns that she has inherited $3 million from her father’s life insurance policy, a windfall that could help her forge a new path. She heads to share the news with Linda, only to discover that Linda has just been fired for having an affair with her boss, a stark reminder that no one escapes the compromises of adult life. Realizing that nothing in life is perfect, January wanders through Manhattan after dark, carrying a fragile hope that tomorrow might be better than today.
Compared to the source novel, the film offers a more hopeful ending for January. The original book concludes with a darker, more transgressive finale—January experimenting with acid, joining an orgy, and wandering to the beach where a hallucinatory encounter with her father ends in a presumed drowning. By contrast, the movie softens that conclusion, hinting at resilience and a future still open to possibility, even as it acknowledges the scars left by love, ambition, and wealth.
