Ten-year-old Foxine LaRue is being groomed for the vaudeville stage by her mother Gertrude, while her older sister, Mary, makes many personal sacrifices to support the family. During one of Foxine's performances, Hollywood agent Al Partridge takes an interest in Mary, and later goes backstage seeking an introduction to her. When Al learns that Foxine is Mary's sister, he immediately feigns interest in the child star in order to get closer to Mary, and sees his chance with her in having the whole family join him on a train ride to Hollywood. Soon after arriving at the International Studios in Hollywood, Foxine gets herself into trouble and is ejected from one studio lot after another. Hoping to generate some much-needed publicity for her daughter, Gertrude concocts a plan in which Foxine is to be the victim of a fake kidnapping. After leaving evidence in her room to suggest a struggle, Foxine, dressed in boys' clothes, mails a ransom note and steals away on a freight train. The next day, as police scour the area looking for Foxine, Mary accuses her mother and Al of staging the kidnapping, and the police overhear her. While Al and Gertrude are arrested for the hoax, Foxine meets a Mexican man named Pascual Orozco, who takes her into his family. Gertrude and Al are later released when the police mysteriously receive a second ransom note. Realizing that he cannot keep her, Pascual drives Foxine to the orphanage she said she was from, but the girl manages to escape en route by stealing his car. Police soon capture Foxine, and later arrest Pascual when they find him mailing a letter that the girl had given him, not realizing that it is a ransom note. Al, Mary and Gertrude all arrive at the jail to take Foxine home, but Foxine refuses to go until they stop a lynch mob from storming the jail and attacking Pascual, who has been accused of the kidnapping. Although Foxine confesses her hoax to the crowd, her fans forgive her and she soon appears in her first film.