Corporal Freddy Benson is a successful smalltime con artist who, while stationed in Europe, seduces women, accepts money and gifts from them, and then moves on.  Discharged from the Army because of an affair with a mayor's daughter, he heads for the French Riviera.  There he meets another womanizer, Lawrence Jamison, a sophisticated counterpart who works on a much grander scale, posing as royalty.  Freddy begins to encroach on Jamison when he appears as the "prince's" idiot brother.

With the arrival of Janet Walker, an American reputed to be a "soap queen," they wager on who will be the first to divest her of $25,000 and the one to remain on the Riviera.  Freddy plays a psychosomatic cripple who has lost the use of his legs because of an unfaithful sweetheart.  He pretends that he needs money to engage the services of a Swiss psychiatrist, Dr.  Schaffhausen.  As a counter to Freddy's charade, Jamison poses as Schaffhausen.

Freddy's charm triumphs until it is found that Janet is not a soap heiress but rather the winner of a beauty contest.  Because Freddy has fallen in love with her and wants to marry her, he concedes the victory to Jamison, who then continues unchallenged in his field.

Notes
The working title of this film was King of the Mountain.  Actress Dody Goodman (1915 - 2008), who had appeared in many Broadway shows since the early 1940s, made her motion picture debut in Bedtime Story.  The film provided the basis for the 1988 Orion Pictures release Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, directed by Frank Oz and starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine.  That film, in turn, was adapted into a Broadway musical of the same name, starring John Lithgow.  The musical opened in New York on March 3, 2005.