A radio singer escapes her managers to attend college incognito.
While New York radio singer Joan Abbott, who is known as "The Crunchy-Wunchy Thrush," records a jingle for her sponsor at the studios of the Amalgamated Broadcasting Company, her legal guardian, Uncle Willie, is busy negotiating a new contract for her. Joan, who dreams of attending college, is angered when she discovers that Willie has signed her to a new contract to pay his debt to a talent agent. Ignoring her contract, Joan adopts the name Susie Smith, the name of her agent's secretary, and leaves for the Midwest to attend Rawley College. There she visits the Kappa Psi Delta fraternity house and meets orchestra leader Buzz O'Hara, who invites her to attend a dance hosted by the fraternity. Though Buzz is attracted to Joan, Joan falls in love with newspaper editor Scoop Davis. Meanwhile, back in New York, J. P. and Willie begin a desperate search to find Joan, and decide to start a publicity campaign challenging college students all across America to find the singer on their campus. When Scoop denounces the nationwide hunt as a cheap attempt at free publicity for an unknown singer, Joan protests his assertion and tells him that the "singer" has an audience of twenty million fans. After Joan joins Rawley's Theta Nu sorority, one of her sorority sisters, Cynthia, begins to suspect that Joan is the contest's sought-after singer. Jealous of Joan's popularity, Cynthia sends an anonymous note to J. P. informing him that the singer is hiding on the Rawley campus. Willie immediately sets out for Rawley, and finds Joan in her exercise class. Joan refuses to leave Rawley, and quickly gets rid of her uncle by having him arrested and charged with being a "peeping Tom." The police order Willie to leave town immediately, and forbid him from ever returning. Willie returns to New York, but because he is ashamed of having been charged with peeping, he does not tell J. P. that he found Joan. Furious at Willie's incompetence, J. P. threatens to have him jailed if he fails to get Joan to return to the city within a week. Meanwhile, Joan helps Babs Marlow, Rawley's star singer, rehearse for a radio contest. Later, when Babs comes down with laryngitis, Joan is pressured into taking her place. J. P. hears the radio broadcast, recognizes Joan's voice and races to Rawley to find her. The Rawley orchestra wins first prize in the radio contest, but the award is rescinded when it is learned that Joan is an impostor, and that she is already under contract to sing for the Crunchy-Wunchy advertisements. Though forced to leave Rawley and return to New York, Joan negotiates a new contract that permits her to sing with the Rawley orchestra.