Hildy, the journalist former wife of newspaper editor Walter Burns, visits his office to inform him that she’s engaged and will be getting remarried the next day. Walter can’t let that happen and frames the fiancé, Bruce Baldwin, for one thing after another, to keep him temporarily held in prison, while trying to steer Hildy into returning to her old job as his employee.

When Jerry and Sherman are producing their boy scout talent show, they ask Lucy to get her 'old friend' Ethel Merman to headline. Merman is in town under an assumed name so Lucy unwittingly recruits her to pass herself off as the Broadway star, with just an hour of voice lessons from Lucy.