Czech refugee Krystyna travels to New York in search of her actress idol and fellow expatriate, Anna. After her own arrival in the Big Apple, Anna finds that celebrity often doesn't travel well, and she must go through a battery of humiliating auditions to try and get work in her adopted land. But when Krystyna and Anna finally meet, they provide a support structure for each other.

When the very moralistic college ethics instructor Jack Lambert finds himself living next door to an accused German death camp commander, he takes it upon himself to rid the world of this man.