 Pat (Charles Winninger) and Molly Malloy (Alice Brady),once famed vaudeville and Broadway performers, arrive to play the small town of Hamilton, Conn. with a troupe of dancers, singers, a trained dog and an educated seal. Harry Clark (Frank Jenks), the clerk at the rundown Swanzey Hotel, insults Pat and the latter uses the $4000, that he and Molly have been saving for years to buy a retirement farm, to buy the hotel so he can fire Harry. Local skinflint, J.A. Higgins (Jed Prouty) wants the hotel as he knows the state has intentions to buy it for a museum, but Pat won t sell. Higgins puts an ad in "Variety" and a swarm of jobless vaudevillians, headed by Marvello (Tommy Riggs) descend to take advantage of the "free board" mentioned in the ad, and soon turn it into a three-ring circus. The only paying customer, Iradius P. Oglethorpe (Donald Meek), informs Pat that the old chairs stored in the cellar are priceless antiques. Based on that, Pat refuses Higgins  second-and-higher offer, but soon learns that Oglethorpe is the village idiot and the chairs are worthless. Their last hope is a benefit show, staged by Higgins  nephew, Chuck Bradford (Tom Brown),who loves Jeanne Carlyle (Dorothea Kent) of the Malloy troupe. But the free-loading vaudeville boarders skip town.