Academy Award winner Greer Garson stars as a frontier Nevada hotel maid who marries a wealthy oilman and financier to become Mrs. Parkington. Looking back at her long and rich life, an octogenarian Mrs. Parkington (Garson) remembers how her new husband hires his former lover (Agnes Moorehead) to teach her to carry herself as a lady then financially ruins the Manhattan social elites who snub her. But the unschooled young maid grows into a mother, grandmother and lady who through joy and tragedy always carries herself with grace.