A photographer falls for a rich girl and gets mixed up with crooks.

One day a bank collection agent informs Rusty Cammeron, who runs the Cammeron and Son and Son photographic supply store with his father and grandfather, that he has only one day to pay the $1,100 he owes. Soon after, a newsreel photographer enters the store and tells Rusty he can earn quick money by selling celebrity photographs. Rusty offers to store the photographer's camera for him, then secretly borrows it and begins shooting around town. His final shot of the day is of the christening of heiress Lucia Corlane's yacht, but when he tries to capture the moment, he almost drowns and has to be rescued by Lucia. After he revives, she sees he is despondent at having ruined the $1,200 camera, and so secretly arranges for her employees to buy $2,400 dollars worth of merchandise from his shop the next day. Rusty is thrilled at his new success, but soon spends all his earnings repaying the bank collector and owner of the ruined camera. Lucia, who has invested all of her inheritance in the Lucky Vista Housing Project, asks Rusty to make a photographic record of the construction, starting with the next day's groundbreaking ceremony. At the ceremony, Rusty's ineptness causes him to record several private conversations, including one in which Lucia's manager, Grantland D. Farns, offers to pay their banker, Hugh Shanway, to refuse Lucia her final loan and therefore allow Farns's friends to buy her out at a substantial loss. Rusty also films some Shanway publicity shots of the newly crowned Miss Lucky Vista with some prize turkeys. Days later, Pop Cammeron puts the film together, and Rusty, who has fallen in love with Lucia, screens it for her, Shanway and his wife, Farns and Miss Lucky Vista. The shots and soundtrack are so garbled that although the incriminating scenes are in the film, no one can hear what Farns is saying to Shanway. After the showing, Farns tries desperately to acquire the film, but Rusty insists on taking it home and fixing it. Farns then hires Miss Lucky Vista to seduce Rusty and steal the film that night, and although Rusty spurns her, Lucia catches them together and is angry. The women storm out, after which Grandpop Cammeron arrives and teaches Rusty how to attract women by showing him scenes from the movies Johnny Eager and Boom Town . The next day at Lucia's yacht, Rusty mimics the male stars's domineering attitude, causing Lucia to shove him in the water and then rescue him again, after which she forgives him. Days later, Farns steals all the cannisters in Rusty's shop but cannot find the corrected film, which Rusty is showing to Lucia at that very moment. When Farns and Shanway arrive at her office and realize she has seen the film, Shanway abducts her and Farns tries to force Rusty to give him the film. Rusty, however, beats Farns up and grabs Lucia, escaping by jumping out a second-story window onto a gigantic lumber loader. After a car chase through a plant nursery, a train and a lake, they capture Farns and Shanway, get directions from a helicopter pilot and, as Lucia accepts Rusty's marriage proposal, drive the crooks to the police station.