Christabel "Christy" Sloane, Eleanor Parker, is a San Francisco-based legal secretary whose taste for finer things clashes with her tight finances, prompting her to confide in her coworker Patsy Clifford, Una Merkel, that she needs to marry a millionaire. When her boss assigns her to Los Angeles to tell Peter Ulysses Lockwood, Fred MacMurray, about an enormous inheritance—28,000,000 pesos ($2,000,000) bequeathed by a deceased uncle—and to obtain the necessary legal papers, Patsy sees it as the perfect setup and urges Christy to charm the heir before revealing the windfall. Christy isn’t eager to be a gold digger, but Patsy’s push lingers as she heads south toward her destiny.
Peter Ulysses Lockwood is the radiant, self-promoting host of a popular radio program, the so-called Sunshine Man, who dispenses syrupy homilies and moral tales about “spreading the sunshine around” to his sponsors and audience. He’s about to marry heiress June Chandler, Kay Buckley, when Christy arrives on the wedding day. She makes a dramatic entrance, catching Peter off guard as he scrambles to dress and board a honeymoon cruise to Honolulu. In a burst of impulse, Christy appears in his apartment, and the two share a charged, impulsive moment. Peter, thinking she’s a mentally unstable stranger rather than a calculating visitor, carries her to his bed. He is initially unmoved by her pleas, while Christy, in a muddled mix of purpose and attraction, finds herself drawn to him more deeply than she anticipated.
Doc, Dr. Roland Cook, Richard Carlson, arrives as the best man and quickly judges the scene wrong. He suspects Peter is simply having a last fling before the ceremony, and he helps steer the situation through a series of mistaken impressions. At the Chandler mansion, Christy’s insistence that Peter has inherited a fortune convinces the guests—and even June—that she is unstable. The wedding is halted, and Peter is urged to drive Christy to Doc’s La Jolla clinic to prove she’s sane. A foggy detour sends the couple off the road onto a desolate beach, where they fumble for keys and spend the night with a group of Mexican railroad workers who welcome them as if they were newlyweds. The next morning brings a humorous, if disorienting, return to reality as Peter apologizes for misreading the situation while the car is towed away.
Back in La Jolla, Doc and Christy reconcile the truth with their own plans. Doc laments the clinic’s financial troubles while noting that Christy’s affection for Peter is real. He schemes to stretch Christy’s “illness” for 24 hours, then to coax Peter into “letting her down gently” under the ruse of a cure. In a staged hotel atmosphere, Doc enlists June and manipulates the emotional currents around Peter, who, still under the therapy’s influence, appears to be surrendering his inheritance to various charities—including Doc’s own clinic.
The next morning, Peter wakes to a flood of press and well-wishers celebrating his supposed generosity. The truth hits hard: he has inherited two million dollars and has given it all away. Realizing the rift he owes Christy, he searches for her, only to find her leaving—the moment he steps into the hallway, he chases after her into a crowded station. Christy hides in the ladies’ room, while Peter proclaims his love. With a mix of determination and luck, they elude the pursuing crowd and hop aboard a train with their Mexican friends to start a new life together.
> spreading the sunshine around
