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Sharpshooter and outlaw Calamity Jane is released from prison in order to catch renegades who have been smuggling guns to the Indians.  She is ordered to Fort Deerfield, where she plans to join up with lawyer Jim Hunter and pose with him as a pioneer couple traveling West.  Hunter is killed before Jane reaches him, but has left word for her to contact a friend of his named Hank Billings in the small town of Buffalo Flats.

Jane is followed there, and makes a narrow escape with "Painless" Peter Potter, a timid, quack correspondence school dentist, whom she marries for the wagon train trip.  Painless, completely oblivious to Jane's ulterior motives for marrying him, attempts to make love to her, but is met with a sharp thud on the back of his head every time he tries to kiss her.

During an Indian attack on a pioneer camp, Jane deftly kills nearly a dozen Indians singlehandedly, but lets everyone, including Painless, believe he did the killing, hoping that the renegades will believe he is a federal agent.

Meanwhile, in Buffalo Flats, Toby Preston, the renegades' leader, receives word that a new federal agent is about to arrive with the wagon train.  When the wagon train pulls into town, Jane learns from Hank that two loads of dynamite came with them.  Believing him to be the agent, Preston's men immediately attempt to get rid of Painless by ordering a saloon girl named Pepper to seduce him, thereby inciting the lethal jealousy of her boyfriend Joe.  Painless talks tough and gives Joe until sundown to get out of town, and Jane decides to let him be killed in order to get rid of him.  At the last minute, as Painless walks out into the street to meet Joe for a duel, Jane decides to save Painless in order to use him as bait, and shoots for him from a window, killing Joe.

Hank later enters Jane and Painless' room with an arrow in his back and tells her that the dynamite is in the undertaker's parlor.  Jane sends Painless after the dynamite, and he bravely holds up the renegades, but then is abducted by an Indian.  He and Jane are then taken hostage at an Indian camp, where she confesses that she married him to aid her in catching the outlaws, but now loves him.  Also at the camp is the white turncoat, Jasper Martin, whom Jane recognizes as one of the governor's aides.  As Jane is tied to a stake and prepared for burning, Painless, transformed by Jane's love, rigs the dynamite to blow, and they escape.

Later, as Jane and Painless leave for their honeymoon, she is pulled from the wagon by one of the horses and dragged off into the distance.

Notes
In the film's closing scene, after Jane Russell is dragged off, Bob Hope says to the camera, "What do you want, a happy ending?"  According to a Paramount News item, Paramount negotiated with representatives of Howard Hughes, who at the time of production had Russell under personal contract, to obtain the actress for this film.  Information in the Paramount Collection at the AMPAS Library reveals the following information about the production:  The filmmakers originally considered Barbara Stanwyck for the part of "Calamity Jane."  The wagon chase scene was shot on location in Chatsworth, and other scenes were shot at China Flats, the Conejo Airport and the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, all in California.  HR news items include the following actors in the cast, but their appearance in the final film has not been confirmed:  Clint Dorrington, Speed Hansen, Ethel Greenwood, Marion Gray, Victor Travers, Al Stewart, Harry Ansel, Elmo Lincoln, Jack Ford, Tex Driscoll, The Cirillo Brothers (Michael, Charles and Tony), Robert Espinoza, James Archuletta, Richard Numena and Chief Sky Eagle.

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In 1952, Hope and Russell starred in a sequel to The Paleface called Son of Paleface, directed by Frank Tashlin.  In 1968, The Paleface was remade into The Shakiest Gun in the West , with Alan Rafkin directing and Don Knotts and Barbara Rhoades starring.  Among the many other films featuring Martha Jane Canary, popularly known as "Calamity Jane," are: the 1923 Famous Players-Lasky film Wild Bill Hickock, directed by Clifford S. Smith and starring Ethel Grey Terry and William S. Hart; the 1936 Cecil B. DeMille film The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur; the 1949 film Calamity Jane and Sam Bass, directed by George Sherman, and starring Yvonne de Carlo and Howard Duff; and the 1995 United Artists film Wild Bill, directed by Walter Hill, and starring Ellen Barkin and Jeff Bridges.

Music includes "Buttons and Bows" and "Meetcha 'Round the Corner," music and lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans; "Get a Man," music and lyrics by Joseph J. Lilley.  Songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans won an Academy Award for Music for their song "Buttons and Bows."  Although Paramount News reported in October 1947 that the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir had been signed to sing "Buttons and Bows" in The Paleface, the song was performed in the film as a solo by Bob Hope.  A recording of the song was released prior to the film's opening, and several reviews mention that it became a hit without the aid of the film.  A reported three million copies of the record and 700,000 copies of the sheet music were sold as of 1949, when orchestra leader and songwriter Freddie Rich filed a plagiarism suit over the song.  Paramount, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Decca, Famous Music, RCA Victor, Columbia Records and Capital Records were named as defendants in the half-million-dollar suit.  After "Buttons and Bows" was used in the film's 1952 sequel, Son of Paleface, Rich, who claimed portions of the song were taken from his score for Paramount's 1942 film Wildcat, added $250,000 to his estimate of damages.  According to various sources, twenty-two to thirty-two bars of "Buttons and Bows" were in question.  A jury turned in a verdict in favor of Paramount, and Rich lost a later appeal in February 1955.