Minsky's

Billy Minsky is struggling to keep his burlesque theater, the Winter Garden, alive through the depression. With ticket sales down, he needs some new way to sell his show. Meanwhile, on a trip to his psychoanalyst, he meets a beautiful girl, Mary, and falls in love with her. He soon finds out that this girl is the daughter of the politician, Randolph Sumner, who is trying to shut his theater down for lewd material. Billy then tries to win over both Mary and Randolph by posing as a political activist (assuming a different name) while making his dim-witted employee Boris pose as operator of the theater, Billy Minsky. The real Minsky, meanwhile, is torn between his newfound love for the politician's daughter and the loyalty he feels to the cast and crew of his theater. He claims that he has convinced Minsky (really his employee Boris) to clean up the show, and invites Sumner to come and see it. His real motive is to get a compromising photograph of Sumner under false pretenses to derail his political career. He is successful in this enterprise, but, in so doing, reveals his real identity and thereby alienates Sumner's daughter, Mary.

Billy has thwarted his opponent, Sumner, but has also lost all hope of winning his daughter Mary. He has saved his theater, and all of its employees, but at the expense of his own happiness. He is given an unexpected second chance, however, when Mary returns to the theater under cover, seeking revenge. Billy sees through her disguise right away, but decides to play along with it in the hopes that they might be reconciled. Although Mary originally returns (with her father in drag) to destroy Billy and his theater, she finds herself more and more sympathetic to the people who make their living there, and in the end she finds it difficult to choose between her father's wishes and the livelihood of the Winter Garden Theater cast and crew.