Gracie Pearson (Fields) is a singer/comedian who returns home to enjoy a little holiday, but there is trouble brewing. First, she has to use all of her hard-earned money to pay for part of what her brother owes to a money lender. Then when they go to see their father, they find he has collapsed due to the Plumborough Market (where he has a stall) is threatened with demolition to make way for a department store. She receives a telegram offering a West End singing job, but decides to try to save the market instead.
As time runs out, Gracie rallies the stall keepers together through a series of ever more hilarious schemes in their attempts to save their livelihoods.
The film is made from three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham. The first, "The Ant and the Grasshopper" concerns the trials and tribulations a ne'er-do-well brother, Tom Ramsey, puts his prim-and-proper businessman brother, George Ramsey through. The escapades that drive George to absolute distraction eventually wins the hand of the world's third richest girl, Margaret Vyne, for shiftless Tom; "Winter Cruise" finds the crew of a cargo boat becoming unglued by the endless chatter of a spinster passenger named Miss Reid. In a desperate attempt to silence the prattling busybody, the ship's officers browbeat a French steward, Pierre into making love to her. The results provide some astounding surprises for the officers, Pierre, and, for certain, Miss Reid; In "The Gigolo and the Gigolette" segment, beautiful daredevil Stella Cotman, who entertains the jaded guests of a resort hotel by diving nightly from an eighty-foot platform into a flaming tank, is losing her nerve.
