Bickering husband-and-wife stage stars are manipulated into a break-up for publicity purposes.

On the sixth anniversary of the enormously successful Broadway revival of Victor Herbert's operetta Sweethearts , the show's stars, Gwen Marlowe and Ernest Lane, are also celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary. Gwen and Ernest are still very much in love, but are tired of constantly working and yearn for a vacation away from Broadway and constant pressures put upon them by their respective families. Felix Lehman, their friend and producer, is worried that Gwen and Ernest are planning to leave the show to go to Hollywood and work for Norman Trumpett. Lehman has never had a written contract with the couple, and Trumpett has been intriguing them with stories of casual working conditions in Hollywood. During the show's intermission, Ernest sends Gwen a love note, something he has done during every performance, and suggests that they meet after the show in their "special place." Gwen excitedly prepares for their romantic rendezvous, but when Felix plays on their sympathies by saying that he has planned a huge anniversary party for them, they go to the party, then discover that the party is the setting for a radio broadcast. By the time Gwen and Ernest reach home and have to hear additional demands by their families, they are fed up and decide to take Trumpett up on his offer. The next day, while each goes shopping for travel clothes, Leon Kronk, Felix's librettist, comes up with an idea to split the couple and make Hollywood not want them. Leo inserts lines from Ernest's love letters, which he found in Gwen's dressing room, and reads them to Gwen as part of his new play. He then tells Gwen that he has gotten the words from a married man who is in love with another woman. Gwen at first thinks there must be a mistake, but when she sees Ernest secretly slip a note under the bedroom door of Kay Jordan, her secretary, she is convinced of their affair, not knowing that Ernest is merely giving Kay an inscription for an engraved gift for Gwen. Gwen will not listen to reason about Ernest and the two split up. Neither goes to Hollywood; instead, each takes a separate company of Sweethearts on tour. Though they do not call or write, each keeps track of the other by reading stories in Variety . After months of being miserable separated from Ernest, Gwen finally realizes that she has been wrong when Leo's play open on Broadway. Gwen reads the plot in a terrible review in Variety and discovers that Leo has incorporated his trick on her and Ernest into the story. At almost the same moment, Ernest calls her to tell her what a fool he has been and the two decide to reconcile. Back in New York, Gwen and Ernest confront Felix, but find that he still can appeal to their sympathies. Finally, they open in another Broadway revival of Sweethearts , aided by the faithful Kay.