In an Italian restaurant in New York City, Judith Poe Wells, the great-granddaughter of Edgar Allan Poe and the author of an as-yet-unpublished "serious" play, eats three plates of spaghetti. When she is unable to pay for her meal, another patron, famous playwright George Macrae, offers to pay the bill for her. Judy refuses and instead sings with the restaurant's orchestra. Amazed by her vocal ability, George follows her out and introduces himself as George Blake. She tells him of her struggle to write "serious" pieces when audiences want frothy tripe. They part company and George sneaks into his apartment, where his producer, Sam Gordon, his girl friend, Lulu Riley, and his friends, Jimmy, Harry and Al Ritz, are waiting impatiently for him. The next day, while Judy is packing to return to her hometown, she receives a check from Sam as a payment for optioning her play. She goes to his office to discuss their plans, but while she is waiting, she meets George, who asked Sam to send her the check out of pity, and they make a date for that night. That evening, George takes Judy to a nightclub, where the master of ceremonies talks her into singing. Sam and Lulu arrive at the club after Judy's song and inform George that Evelyn Moore, the star of his musical comedy, has quit. Ecstatic, George asks Judy to take Evelyn's place, but she angrily walks out after telling him that she will have nothing to do with his "stupid musical comedies." Disgusted with Lulu's bad influence on George's behavior, Sam has the Ritz Brothers find Judy. Sam talks Judy into performing the play, which is also to feature famed violinist Rubinoff, while Lulu is sent on a vacation. After rehearsing together, Judy and George fall in love, and after the dress rehearsal, he tells her that he loves her. Having read rumors of the romance in a gossip column, Lulu flies back, tells Judy to keep away from George and informs George that they were married one day while they were drunk. Upon hearing this, Judy leaves the city and returns to her old job selling sheet music. One day, she receives music for a musical adaptation of her play that Sam bought. Angry at the thought of her work being reduced to a "mere" musical, she rushes back to New York and into the theater where the play is being performed. As the audience chants for the author to take a bow, Judy forgets her anger and, to the audience's delight, announces that she has been working on a new piece. Lulu and George arrive in time to hear the news, and in her anger at seeing Judy in the theater, Lulu does not notice that her purse has come open, and her and George's marriage license has fallen out. Harry notices that it has not been signed, and as George and Judy celebrate the oversight with a kiss, the curtain is drawn.