Hollywood hopeful Peggy Pepper arrives at a major studio, from Georgia, to become a great dramatic star. Things don't go entirely according to plan.

When a bank executive disappears, he is accused of stealing a fortune from the bank. But his daughter and her criminologist friend set out to find her father and clear his name.

Charley falls for both a mother and her daughter.

Billie has the mistaken impression that her only daughter is pregnant and must rush to the hospital. At the same time, her old boyfriend, now wealthy, returns to make amends with her.

Notorious shootist and womanizer Quirt Evans' horse collapses as he passes a Quaker family's home. Quirt has been wounded, and the kindly family takes him in to nurse him back to health against the advice of others. The handsome Evans quickly attracts the affections of their beautiful daughter, Penelope. He develops an affection for the family and their faith, but his troubled past follows him.

Professor Clyde is on the lookout for a nightshirt bandit prowling the college campus.

The stooges are pest exterminators who drum up business by planting vermin in a ritzy mansion where a party is going on. The boys are hired, but must dress as guests to work unobserved. They disrupt the party and a wild pie fight ensues.

Businesswoman Claire King is the daughter of a powerful advertising executive. When Claire marries humble copywriter Bill Landin, she wants to use her influence to help her husband get ahead, but he will have none of it.

Vera thinks she's witnessed a man decapitating his wife. Actually, she's only seen magician Bluebeard the Great rehearsing his act. Still convinced that the magician is a killer, Vera goes through all sorts of comic agony when she is forced to share the same train compartment with Bluebeard (who doesn't help matters when he offers her a sandwich consisting of "scrambled brains and tongue").

In this family saga, Mrs. Parkington recounts the story of her life, beginning as a hotel maid in frontier Nevada where she is swept off her feet by mine owner and financier Augustus Parkington. He moves them to New York, tries to remake her into a society woman, and establishes their home among the wealthiest of New York's high society. Family and social life is not always peaceful, however, and she guides us, in flashbacks, through the rises and falls of the Parkington family fortunes.