Click for larger image

While on tour in Washington, DC to promote her film, Drifting Lady, glamorous movie star Mavis Arden charms her public, giving the appearance of a demure woman, instead of the prurient and temperamental person she really is.

While Mavis discreetly dines with her old flame, Francis X. Harrigan, who is running for Congress, her press agent, Morgan, calls the press in to interrupt the rendezvous, hoping to create a scandal for the politician so that he will lose interest in Mavis.  Mavis gives them an impromptu speech about the country needing more marriages, which appears in the papers the next day.

Harrigan is about to write a rebuttal, when his friend, Andy Kelton, calls Harrigan's interview with Mavis the cleverest political maneuver he has ever made, certain that he will win the votes of every spinster in the country.  Harrigan is now more determined than ever to meet Mavis at her next stop, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Because a clause in Mavis' contract with Superfine Pictures, Inc. forbids her to marry for five years, she is "very susceptible" to the affections of men, and it is Morgan's job to be sure she is not tempted.

Resuming her tour, Mavis is held over in a small town ninety miles outside Harrisburg when her customized Rolls Royce breaks down.  Although anxious to meet Harrigan, Mavis soon turns her attentions to Bud Norton, her car mechanic, admiring his "large and sinewy muscles."  Bud, however, is engaged to Joyce, whose once-prominent family runs "The Haven," a quaint boardinghouse where Mavis stays.  Despite Morgan's efforts to keep Mavis from Bud, she seduces him in the boardinghouse parlor while he demonstrates his movie sound machine, which she promises to promote in Hollywood.  Joyce is heartbroken, and her aunt Kate, a spinster, advises her to fight for her man before he leaves for Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Harrigan tries to reach Mavis by telephone and, while waiting on the line, he hears one of the operators reading aloud a newspaper headline about a kidnapping; Harrigan mistakenly concludes that Mavis has been kidnapped.  Gladys, The Haven's star-struck maid, hears about Mavis' kidnapping on the radio and, believing that Morgan is her captor, calls the police.

The next day, when Morgan tells Mavis that Joyce is pregnant, Mavis tells Bud, who has already packed a suitcase, that her affection for him was just "a mad, mad whim," only to find out later that Morgan was lying.  When the police arrive with Harrigan and Gladys to arrest the alleged kidnapper, Mavis, furious with Morgan for endlessly meddling in her love affairs.  Believing that he staged the incident as a joke, Mavis allows the police to arrest him.  Morgan then confesses that his real reason for interfering was his own love for Mavis.  Driving away with a police escort, Mavis and Morgan kiss.