Bad News Johnson, a con artist from Memphis, Tennessee, arrives in Dallas, Texas accompanied by his dim sidekick July Jones with only twenty-five cents between them.
The duo arrange to become boarders at the home of Louella "Mama Lou" Holiday, who is fooled into believing that Johnson is an acting teacher named Whitney Vanderbilt; Jones takes the alias of Cornbread Green.
Mrs. Holiday agrees to give the men free room and board if they will provide poise lessons to her daughter, an aspiring beauty queen named Honey Dew.
[2] The juke joint scenes were filmed on location at the Rose Room in Dallas and Don’s Keyhole in San Antonio, Texas, and included musical numbers featuring band leader Red Calhoun.
He made one final film appearance in a small role in the 1962 Italian horror production L'Orribile Segreto del Dottor Hitchcock.