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Milton Sills, one of the silent era's great matinee idols, starred in this follow-up to his sound debut in the part-talkie The Barker (1928). Like that film, a major success for the veteran leading man, His Captive Woman was essentially a silent film with a music score and a few talking sequences. Sills plays Tom McCarthy, a New York policeman assigned to arrest Anna Janssen (Dorothy Mackaill), a cabaret dancer accused of killing her "sugar daddy." Catching up with the girl on a South Seas island, McCarthy charters a steamer to bring her back to New York. But the steamer sinks and, stranded on a deserted island, Tom and Anna fall in love. They are rescued soon enough, alas, and Anna is placed on trial for her life. Tom, however, takes the stand in her defense and the judge "sentences" him to marry the girl, who is acquitted of the murder. Although based on a 1923 novel by Arthur Chesney Train, His Captive Woman bore a striking resemblance to one of 1929's more noteworthy successes, The Trial of Mary Dugan.