Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff and John Howard star in Disputed Passage, a gripping story about the powerful healing ability of the human spirit. John Wesley Beaven (Howard), an understudy of Dr. Tubby Forster (Tamiroff), esteemed professor of medicine and surgery, struggles to fully surrender to his teachers philosophy of keeping the sterility of science separate from the warmth of the human spirit. His views are challenged after he falls in love with Lan Ying (Lamour), a Chinese woman of American descent raised in Shanghai. Upon completion of paying a personal debt to her Chinese father, she promptly returns to John to accept his marriage proposal but is interjected by Foster claiming that she would ruin his life. When John becomes aware that Foster has interfered, he sets out to find his love in China.