A news reporter turns the woman he loves into a media star after she rejects an aristocrat's marriage proposal.
Stenographer Marilyn David, known as Lynn, and her best friend, reporter Peter Dawes, meet every Thursday night on a bench at the New York Public Library, where they eat popcorn. Lynn, however, meets vacationing English aristocrat Charles Gray Granville, and they fall in love, although he keeps his royal identity a secret. Gray is already engaged to a British woman, Helen Fergus, and when he tells his father, Duke of Lomeshire, that he wants to marry Lynn, the duke insists they return to England and break the engagement properly. Gray lies to Lynn about why he's leaving New York, but Pete meets the Granvilles at the dock, where Gray tells him that nothing of significance happened to him in New York and that he is still engaged to Helen. Furious that Gray used the woman he loves, Pete prints an article about Lynn, whom he calls "No Girl," leaving Gray at the altar and forcing him to return to England heartbroken. When the Granvilles, onboard ship, receive word that Helen has broken her engagement because of the scandal, the duke assumes Lynn is trying to blackmail him. Gray then sends Lynn a telegram at work asking her price to forget him, and when her boss subsequently calls her "duchess," she quits her job. Pete then decides to capitalize on Lynn's publicity and make her a celebrity. He gets her a job as a singer and dancer at Nate's Cafe, despite the fact that she can neither sing nor dance. At her opening, Lynn's self-effacing manner about her lack of talent wins laughs from the audience, and she becomes a hit. When the girl friend of Otto Bushe, New York's most infamous playboy, insults Lynn, she has the woman escorted out of Nate's and makes the papers. Following one clever publicity stunt after another, "No Girl" becomes a household name, and as a nightclub star, she goes to London to perform. Gray is in the audience, and Lynn, assuming they are still in love, goes out with him. Heartbroken, Pete graciously returns to the states to allow Lynn her happiness, but sends her a box of popcorn to assure her he still loves her. When Gray asks Lynn to go away with him for a week, insinuating that she has loose morals, she announces to the press that she is returning to New York to sit on a bench and eat popcorn. Lynn arrives in New York on a Thursday night in the snow and rushes through a throng of admirers, tearing her mink, to the library bench to meet Pete. After tussling with a cab driver because he has no money on him, Pete arrives, popcorn in hand, and he and Lynn embrace on the bench.
