Danny O’Neill and Hank Taylor are rival trumpeters with the Perennials, a college band, and both men are still attending college by failing their exams seven years in a row. In the midst of a performance, Danny spies Ellen Miller who ends up being made band manager. Both men compete for her affections while trying to get the other one fired.
When beautiful Mary returns to her “whistle stop” home town, long-standing feelings of animosity between two of her old boyfriends leads to robbery and murder.
An illiterate stooge in a traveling medicine show wanders into a strange town and is picked up on a vagrancy charge. The town’s corrupt officials mistake him for the inspector general whom they think is traveling in disguise. Fearing he will discover they’ve been pocketing tax money, they make several bungled attempts to kill him.
Dick Tracy investigates the theft of a fortune of fur coats, a possible insurance swindle and several murders, all linked to a huge thug who wears a hook in place of his right hand.
