After years of living in her selfish parents' (Melvyn Douglas and Lynn Bari) egotistical shadows, desperate teenager Jill Bradley (Joan Evans) makes a last-ditch play for attention by attempting suicide. Jill's guilt-ridden father tries at last to help her and to cheer her up but new problems arise.

In Chicago, an unemployed actor aims to solve the mystery concerning a string of ax murders, apparently committed by a lunatic.

Director Charles Lederer's 1959 musical stars James Cagney as an unscrupulous longshoreman who'll resort to every dirty trick in the book to win his union's presidency.