Charles Laughton gives an Oscar-winning performance as 14th-century British monarch Henry VIII in Alexander Korda's titillating period piece about the king's relationships with his many wives. Ladies-in-waiting gossip and a narrator serves up scathing commentary as Henry has Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) beheaded, divorces Anne of Cleves (Elsa Lanchester), beheads his next wife, Katherine Howard, and finally meets his match in Catherine Parr.