His friend's widow, Leonor (Flor Silvestre) is unable to support her child, Chavita, so she leaves the kid with Cantinflas so she can go to Guadalajara, Jalisco in order to seek help from her parents.
In order to find a better job, Cantinflas goes to school, where he tries to learn but, instead, becomes smitten with Raquel (Manola Saavedra), an attractive teacher who works there.
While in school, he tries finding more jobs, with comic results: first, as a shoe shiner in a night club, where he gets into various incidents on his first night, including an unexpected entrance in the dancers' dressing room and an accidental entrance to Ravel's Boléro dance act performed by Elaine Bruce (from which the pun in the Spanish title is drawn, as he confuses the name of the piece, Boléro, with the name with which shoeshiners are known in Mexico, bolero, thus thinking that the dance is for him).
He is stuck himself at the top of La Quebrada (as Chavita escapes easily to the other side) and he is obliged to make a spectacular dive.
She eventually declares her love for Cantinflas and he gleefully kicks a ball, hitting a policeman guarding the park; after that, he and Raquel kiss each other.