Plot

A bumbling pants presser at an upscale hotel's valet service nurses an unrequited crush on a Broadway star. He gets more than he bargained for when she agrees to marry him, to spite her womanizing fiance, and encounters Nazi saboteurs.

Constance Shaw is a dance star on Broadway, Joseph Rivington Renolds is a keen fan of her. After she is fed up with her fiance, she meets Joseph and marries him, because she thinks he is the owner of a mine. But that's a misunderstanding, he works at a cleaning shop. After disturbing rehearsals he is thrown out of the theater, but when he sneaks in again, he discovers an actor talking about a bomb he wants to set in the theater to blow up an ammunition store next door.—Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>

Bumbling hotel pants-presser Joseph Rivington Renolds (Red Skelton) is obsessed with Broadway performer Miss Constance 'Connie' Shaw (Eleanor Powell) and routinely "borrows" his customers' fancy clothes in order to follow her around town. The temperamental Connie, however, is oblivious to Joe, preferring the company of her fiancé, actor Larry West (Richard Ainley).

One night, while Joe is at a nightclub wearing a customer's expensive tuxedo, Connie comes in and sees Larry kissing socialite Suretta Brenton (Patricia Dane). Enraged with jealousy, Connie sits at Joe's table and pretends to be his date. By chance, the tuxedo's owner, tourist Alfred Spelvin (Andrew Tombes), is sitting at the next table and recognizes his suit on Joe. Spelvin pursues him onto the dance floor, but is unable to catch the clumsy Joe, who flees the club.

Later, Joe goes to see his sixty-fifth performance of Dixie Lou , a Civil War melodrama starring Connie and Larry. After the show, Kenneth 'Ken' Lawlor (Thurston Hall), the producer of Dixie Lou, brings Suretta to Connie's dressing room to discuss backing for Connie and Larry's next show. After the smug Suretta shows off a ruby bracelet that the ambitious Larry has bought for her, Connie is furious and storms out of her dressing room. On her way out, she runs into Joe and, seeing the smitten fan, gets an idea.

Sometime later, Connie and Joe return to the nightclub, and seeing Larry, Suretta and Kenneth seated together, Connie introduces Joe as her new husband. Connie pretends that Joe owns gold mines, and she informs Kenneth about her husband's wealth. Kenneth immediately sets up a meeting with him.

Connie and Joe then check into the honeymoon suite at the same hotel at which Joe works, and while Joe is out securing some champagne, Connie starts to write a farewell letter to him. Before she finishes, however, Larry calls and again infuriates her with his indifference.

Connie is about to sneak off when Joe returns with the champagne. Unable to say goodbye to the love struck Joe, Connie decides to drug him instead and slips some of her sleeping pills into his champagne. Joe unwittingly switches the glasses, however, and Connie falls into a deep slumber. Joe has a heck of a time getting her up off the floor and over to bed. As he finally covers her up and kisses her goodnight on the cheek, the bed collapses. Joe goes out to sleep on the couch.

The next morning, Joe delivers breakfast to Connie and when she wakes up and sees him, she screams. He runs out, but she comes out shortly after and apologizes.

Kenneth arrives at the suite, with Larry and Suretta. Larry claims to want to invest in Kenneth's new show with Joe. Unknown to Kenneth, Joe and Connie, Suretta is aware of Joe's impersonation and calls for valet service.

Joe's boss, tailor Ed Jackson (Sam Levene), responds to the valet call and when he sees Joe in the room, he angrily tells everyone there that Joe is a pants presser and works for him. Connie confesses that she had in fact married Joe.

Feeling that he has nothing more to lose, Joe slugs the cocky Larry, then attempts suicide by asphyxiating himself with the valet service gas. However, the gas automatically shuts off after hours, and as the gas shuts off, Joe simply falls asleep and dreams about a dancing Connie.

Joe is eventually awakened by Ed, who slaps him repeatedly and tells him he's fired. The blustery Ed at first criticizes Joe for thinking he could marry a famous performer like Connie, then changes his mind, deciding it's a personal insult to him and all other pants pressers. He insists that Joe assert himself and demand his conjugal rights. Pushed by Ed, Joe sneaks into the theater through the cellar and hides in a stage prop box as Hazel Scott, Lena Horn, and their background singers rehearse the song, Jericho.

Joe gets tossed out of the theater, but accidentally falls into the old coal chute and down into the storage cellar. There, he bumps into actor Roy Hartwood (John Hodiak). Unknown to Joe, Roy is a Nazi saboteur and has been digging a hole in the theater wall so that he can plant a bomb and destroy some ordnance that are being stored next door. Roy is immediately suspicious of Joe, but once he realizes Joe doesn't know anything about his activities, he lets him go.

Roy is ordered by his superiors to set off the bomb that night, so he asks Joe, who has bragged that he knows every line in the show backward and forward, to cover for him. Joe is reluctant, until he's reminded he gets to kiss Connie at the end of the first act. He dons Roy's stage beard and costume, nearly cutting his right ear with the scissor in the process. He does accidentally cut one of the straps of his t-shirt, but fixes that by gluing it to his skin.

Mistaking Joe for Roy, one of Roy's Nazi cohorts slips Joe a message about a submarine rendezvous, but Joe fails to grasp its significance.

Joe finishes preparing himself in costume by way overdoing it on some powder to make it appear as though his uniform is dust-covered.

As the show starts, Joe stumbles and bumbles, knocking over stage props, sneezing from all the dust on his uniform, stepping on Connie's dress, and later pinning it to a wall with a prop sword. His performance enrages Connie and the stage crew, but Joe refuses to leave the stage.

Joe is about to kiss Connie, when he suddenly understands the Nazi's message. He dashes offstage and becomes engaged in a protracted fight with Roy, starting in the cellar, continuing on stage, up in the rafters and back to the cellar.

After knocking out Roy, Joe begins a frantic search for the bomb. Connie soon joins him and, impressed by his bravery, professes her love. Joe finally realizes a wire he kept tripping over was connected to the bomb. Moments before it is to explode, Joe defuses the bomb and then learns from the police that he will be rewarded for his efforts.

Later, Joe becomes not only Connie's true husband but the co-producer of her next show as well.