Oliver Quackenbush, [Lou Costello], Molly McCarthy, [Martha O'Driscoll], and Slats McCarthy, [Bud Abbott], work as taxi dancers at the Miramar Ballroom, turning the floor into a playground where quick wit, pratfalls, and high-spirited hustle keep the night moving and the audience laughing.
A careless plan kicks off the chaos: Slats plants a phony article in the local paper declaring Molly's dream is to attend Bixby College. The idea surprisingly reaches the dean, who offers Molly a scholarship—but she’s only willing to accept if Oliver and Slats can accompany her, so the trio is hired as caretakers to look after her and the college’s interests, all while keeping their schemes under wraps.
Meanwhile, Chairman Kirkland [Charles Dingle] holds the mortgage on the aging campus and threatens foreclosure if Molly’s unruly ambition isn’t checked. His daughter Diane [June Vincent], who also attends Bixby, becomes a focal point of the college’s struggle to preserve tradition—a tension that underscores the pressure Molly faces as she steps into a world far different from the ballroom’s bright lights.
As the plan unfolds, Mr. Johnson [Lon Chaney Jr], the dean’s blunt supervisor, assigns tasks that go spectacularly wrong for Oliver and Slats. Frustrated but not defeated, Slats hatches a bold scheme to raise $20,000 to save the school: Oliver will wrestle the Masked Marvel [Sammy Stein]. When the actual masked challenger falls ill, Mr. Johnson steps in, yet Oliver still manages to clinch the victory, much to Slats’s delight and fiddly calculation.
With the match won, Slats bets the $1,000 prize on Bixby in a basketball game set at dazzling odds—20 to 1. To secure the outcome, the bookie brings in a professional squad to face Bixby’s team, nicknamed Carlton Basketball Coach [Anthony Warde], turning the campus schedule into a tense gamble. To complicate matters further, Oliver disguises himself in drag to join the Bixby team, stepping into the persona of Daisy Dimple, the claimed “world’s greatest woman basketball player.” The transformation brings a burst of chaos: a head bump, a flash of confidence, and a sudden swing back to reality that leaves Oliver wobbling between identities.
Bixby’s fortunes swing with every misstep, and the young trio finds themselves juggling duties, loyalty, and luck as the game progresses. When the shimmering veneer of the plan begins to crack, Oliver’s dual life threatens to derail both the game and the mortgage-saving mission. Yet the film’s heart remains with their camaraderie—three goofball partners who refuse to quit when the odds spike.
The finale spirals into a wild crosstown chase, culminating in an improbable capture: a sailboat mounted on a trailer becomes the unlikely conveyance for a last-ditch getaway. In a burst of slapstick timing and stubborn resolve, the gang recovers the bookie’s money and delivers the final blow that saves the mortgage and, with it, the future of Bixby College. What began as a simple hustle to fund a dream blossoms into a comedy of hearts, where friendship, perseverance, and a pinch of reckless luck prove enough to keep the lights on and the doors open for the students who matter most.
