[3][4][5] Polish American Joe Miracle (Mirakowski) returns from fighting in World War II, only to find his San Francisco nightclub taken over by the mob, and his friend and partner Leo missing and presumed murdered.

However, Jenny Jones, a kind-hearted local social worker who was visiting earlier at Victor and Clara's apartment because of reported domestic problems, gets him remanded into her custody instead.

However, he is recognized by local muckraking newspaper columnist Henry "Early" Byrd, who had written about and broadcast radio news reports and opinions about the nightclub heist, and who possibly could have done it.

During their argument, he describes his lifelong drive to get out of the "gutter" where he was born, and accuses her of living in an ivory tower and not knowing the real sordid underside of life; she shames him by telling of how a drunken blow from her father in her childhood rendered her deaf, so she has to use a hearing aid.

Joe enters the gambling joint through a secret passageway and takes the money back from the office vault of the new crime boss, Barney Teener.

Joe hires some homeless men to dress up as Santa Claus to distribute presents to the children at a fundraiser back at the settlement house.