The Barefoot Contessa

“The world's most beautiful animal!”

Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) is a washed-up director who needs one more picture to work again, and he finds his chance dancing in a Madrid nightclub. Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner) is a peasant with no training, and Harry and his producer, Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O'Brien), talk her into a screen test. Joseph L. Mankiewicz sets the story among the rich and the famous, but what holds it together is the plain friendship between Harry and Maria.