In the gay '90s, cardsharps take over a Mississippi riverboat from a kindly captain. Their first act is to change the showboat into a floating gambling house. A ham actor and his bumbling sidekick try to devise a way to help the captain regain ownership of the vessel.
Larry Nelson, paroled from prison after serving nearly half of his thirty-year sentence, is determined to not fall into the clutches of the law again, and takes a quiet job at a country sanitarium. Thete, he meets and falls for a nurse, Charlotte Maynard, and he knows the only way to enter her web is to have a lot of money, for Miss Maynard is somewhat of a gold-digger.
Ole and Chic are comedians employed in a nightclub, but seeking to be released from their contracts to take a better job. But the prissy nightclub owner, B. J. Wagonhorn, refuses to let them go. In reprisal, they start hurling insults at the nightclub patrons… a ploy that soon has them facing multiple lawsuits… to the delight of three struggling attorneys, Charlie Rodman, Bettty Wilson and Arthur Lane.
