Socialite Ellen Bradford arrives on Tonga, a remote island in the South Pacific, to marry her fiancee, Roy Armstrong. She is shocked to discover that he has become a drunk and is heavily in debt to "Dutch Mike" Lutze, the gangster who controls the island. Seeking to free Roy from Lutze's clutches, she enlists the aid of Jim Thorne, a sea captain stranded on Tonga. But her fiancee's fortunes become less important when Ellen finds herself falling in love with the handsome adventurer.
Paradise Island features early sound performances from two of the biggest stars of the silent era. Leading man Kenneth Harlan signed to D.W. Griffith's production company in 1916, and appeared in films such as The Penalty (1920), The Primitive Lover (1922), and The Virginian (1923). His sound career turned out to be not so prestigious, and he ended up in in "B" pictures (Black Dragons, The Corpse Vanishes) and serials (Dick Tracy's G-Men, The Masked Marvel). Marceline Day started her career as a teenager under the name "Alice Day", usually playing Harry Langdon's love interest in shorts for Mack Sennett. Her blossoming good looks led to her being cast in two all-time classics, London After Midnight (1927) with Lon Chaney, and The Cameraman (1928) opposite Buster Keaton. Director Bert Glennon would go on to greater success as a cinematographer on dozens of classic films, including Stagecoach (1939), Rio Grande (1950), and House of Wax (1953).