The script was written by Jack Cunningham based on a story by "Charles Bogle" (one of Fields's writing pseudonyms).

In 1897, a blustery actor-manager, "The Great McGonigle" (W. C. Fields), and his traveling theater troupe is perpetually underfunded and always just a step ahead of the law and creditors.

Wally's wealthy father (Oscar Apfel) arrives in the town where the troupe is scheduled to perform a Victorian melodrama, William H. Smith's popular temperance play, The Drunkard.

One of the players has resigned, and Wally wins the part, affording him a chance to act and also to perform a couple of songs in his strong tenor voice.

Reaction shots show audience members at a pitch of emotional involvement: an excited elderly spectator is cautioned by his wife to think of his heart; a young sophisticate skeptically asks his pretty date, "Do you think this is a good play?"

For the 1930s, the film is unusual in that it does not mock but instead nostalgically celebrates the enthusiasm 1890s American small-town audiences had for traveling theatrical companies of all sorts.