Gregory Peck is a boisterous sea captain in the Pacific Coast, circa 1850, who has a plan to buy Alaska from the Russians… if they don’t kill him first.

As told to a psychiatrist: Mr. Peabody, middle-aged Bostonian on vacation with his wife in the Caribbean, hears mysterious, wordless singing on an uninhabited rock in the bay. Fishing in the vicinity, he catches…a mermaid. He takes her home and, though she has no spoken language, falls in love with her. Of course, his wife won’t believe that thing in the bathtub is anything but a large fish. Predictable complications follow in rather tame fashion.

After her cheating husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful, but can’t win the approval of her spoiled daughter.