Pat and Molly Malloy, once famed vaudeville and Broadway performers, arrive to play the small town of Hamilton, Conn. with a troupe of dancers, singers, a trained dog and an educated seal. Harry Clark, the clerk at the rundown Swanzey Hotel, insults Pat and the latter uses the $4000, that he and Molly have been saving for years to buy a retirement farm, to buy the hotel so he can fire Harry. Local skinflint, J.A. Higgins wants the hotel as he knows the state has intentions to buy it for a museum, but Pat won't sell. Higgins puts an ad in "Variety" and a swarm of jobless vaudevillians, headed by Marvello descend to take advantage of the "free board" mentioned in the ad, and soon turn it into a three-ring circus. The only paying customer, Iradius P. Oglethorpe, informs Pat that the old chairs stored in the cellar are priceless antiques. Based on that, Pat refuses Higgins' second-and-higher offer, but soon learns that Oglethorpe is the village idiot and the chairs are worthless. Their last hope is a benefit show, staged by Higgins' nephew, Chuck Bradford, who loves Jeanne Carlyle of the Malloy troupe. But the free-loading vaudeville boarders skip town.