Lila Green is an insecure and aging showgirl for Madame Olga's stage shows. When her boyfriend, Rick, runs off with the shows money, Madame Olga and Ronny let Lila go. Lila goes to stay with her old neighbours, Helen Bard and her teenage son, Kenny. Lila decides to go out and get a regular job and try and live a normal life. All seem well until, Lila and Kenny stop fighting their attraction for one another.

After failing to make a successful career as a dancer in movies, Lila Green joins a second-rate vaudeville act. When the show arrives in the small Kansas town where Lila spent part of her childhood, Ricky Powers, the troupe's manager and Lila's lover, skips town with their money, and Lila moves in with an old friend, Helen Baird, and her young son, Kenny. The ardent but inexperienced Kenny becomes so attracted to Lila that he breaks off with his teenaged girl friend and asks Lila to marry him. Lila's happiness is shattered when she realizes that Kenny's promises are a result of youthful infatuation. Ricky returns to offer Lila a job--performing a striptease at a stag show--and she reluctantly agrees to do the act. Kenny watches the performance and becomes so disgusted with what Lila has been reduced to that he once more proposes. She refuses, however, knowing that their marriage would never work, and she decides also to forego her career to make a new life for herself.