Baroness Teri (Kay Francis) has a life that many would envy. She’s married to Baron Franz (Henry Kolker), who can easily afford to buy her all the furs and jewelery she could ever want. There’s just one problem — he’s incredibly boring. Teri desperately needs some excitement in her life, so she openly dates other men, but gets bored with them pretty quickly, too.
When Teri and Franz go to a jewelery store so that Franz can buy Teri a very large diamond ring, the store is robbed by an unnamed robber (William Powell). This is no ordinary jewel thief, though. He’s very suave, charming, and has the unusual habit of giving marijuana to the people he robs so they won’t call the police. And it just so happens that this robber is exactly the type of man Teri has been longing for. He flirts with her as he steals her new ring from her, and she’s so enchanted with him that she doesn’t even need the marijuana to stop her from talking to the cops.
When Teri gets back home, she finds some mysterious flowers waiting for her and discovers that her jewelry safe has been opened. However, nothing has been stolen. In fact, something has been added to it — the ring that had just been stolen from her. The robber sneaks up to her room and Teri tries to get him to take the ring back since there’s no way for her to wear it without raising suspicions. He refuses, and it isn’t long before there’s a knock at the door from Detective Fritz (Alan Mowbray), who arrests Teri for being an accomplice to the robber.
It just so happens that Detective Fritz isn’t a detective after all, he’s actually working for the robber. Fritz brings Teri to the robber’s apartment, where he spends the night wooing her and she falls even more deeply under his spell. They make plans to run away to Nice together, but before they can leave, the real police show up. The robber and his gang escape, but first, they tie Teri to a chair so the cops won’t accuse her of being an accomplice. When all is said and done, her name stays clear, but she announces that she could use a vacation to recover from her “ordeal.” Perhaps some time in Nice would do the trick…
If you know someone who thinks old movies were all super sanitized and boring, Jewel Robbery is the perfect movie to prove them wrong. With its witty banter, infidelity, jewel heists, and drug use, Jewel Robbery is perfectly pre-code from start to finish. The chemistry between Kay Francis and William Powell is phenomenal and it’s very hard not to laugh at the scenes of the jewelery store’s security guard acting high as a kite after the robber gives him that joint. There’s nothing about it I didn’t like. It’s a total delight to watch and is absolutely essential pre-code viewing.
