In the film, a young girl is left with the notoriously cheap Sorrowful Jones (Hope) as a marker for a bet.

Sorrowful Jones is a New York bookie who hides his operation behind a trap door in a Broadway barber shop.

He suffers from a financial setback when a horse named Dreamy Joe, owned by gangster Big Steve Holloway, unexpectedly wins a race.

When visiting a nightclub, Jones learns that the race was fixed by Big Steve, who tells him about giving the horse a speedball.

To save Martha Jane and wake her up, Jones and his partner Regret steal the horse from Big Steve at the race track.

[2] It was paired with a performance by the Louis Prima orchestra, also featuring his future wife, Keely Smith, and grossed $85,000 in its opening week.

[5] It went on general release in the United States on July 4, 1949 and remained at the top of the box office for the next three weeks, tied initially with Neptune's Daughter and then The Girl from Jones Beach.