Bob Hope plays a baby photographer who gets mixed up with gangsters in this slapstick movie. Ronnie Jackson (Hope) wants to be like Sam McCloud (Alan Ladd), a private investigator, and gets his big break when a mysterious femme fatale (Dorothy Lamour) mistakes him for McCloud and asks for help. Jackson plays detective, but is soon in way over his head as he becomes embroiled in a dangerous (and comic) mystery. This spoof of the hardboiled detective genre also features horror legends Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney as Hope's villainous foils.