The true story of Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz, an eccentric socialite in the 1920s likened to a modern-day Noah. On her New York estate, she, her physician husband Bill and her assistant Dick care for a menagerie as extensive as a zoo's. Adding to the fun are her four chimpanzees whom she treats as her children; their clothes are tailor-made at Bergdorf Goodman; she teaches them table manners, how to mix martinis, do light housework and say their prayers. And they become the stars of Chicago's 1933 World's Fair. But her gorilla, Buddy is her favorite child. When she first sees him, he is a sickly baby gorilla. But she opens her home and her heart to him, and proceeds to raise him as if he were her own... and, for a time, he is. Still, Buddy inevitably grows up, and keeping him becomes increasingly dangerous for Trudy because he can't fit into the human world he lives in, anymore, and yet can't be his true self either. Finally, Trudy has to make the decision all mothers face--she has to let him go.