Sailors Larry Wilson, Peanuts and Eddie go on shore leave to Shanghai, where they hope to meet pretty girls.  Larry impersonates a rickshaw driver in order to meet beautiful Jean Legai, but she sees through his disguise and gets in another rickshaw.  Larry follows Jean to the club where she works as a singer, and tries to romance her in her dressing room.  She is cold to him but agrees to meet him later.

When she returns home that evening, however, she is angered to find Larry cooking dinner in her apartment.  She becomes increasingly irritated by his attempts to steal a kiss, until finally, Larry realizes that Jean cannot be wooed by his usual sailor tactics.  He strikes a bargain with her not to make any passes at her if she will go out with him for a week, and they begin spending time together.  As the days go by, the couple fall in love, and while Jean wishes that Larry would break his part of the bargain, Larry contemplates asking her to marry him.

The night before Larry leaves, he promises Jean that he will send for her when he reaches Los Angeles.  On board his ship, however, Larry discusses marriage with an officer, who advises him that Navy men should not marry because they do not make enough money to support a wife.  Larry becomes depressed and writes Jean a letter to end their romance.  Eddie and Peanuts, who believe that Jean is a "swell girl," are dismayed at Larry's callous treatment of her, and substitute his letter with a love letter that they have written.  Jean is thrilled by the romantic letter and writes a response, which Peanuts and Eddie hide from Larry.

Their scheme grows more complicated, however, when Jean quits her job and moves to Los Angeles.  Before Peanuts and Eddie can intercept her, Jean finds Larry in a dance hall with another girl.  Larry, who believes that Jean's lack of response to his letter meant that she also wanted to end their relationship, is upset when she dances with a Marine to make him jealous.  Peanuts and Eddie again contrive to bring the lovers together by telling Larry that Jean, who is Canadian, will be deported if he does not marry her.  They then tell Jean that Larry will go to jail if she does not marry him, because she was allowed into the United States on the basis of Larry's promise to the immigration authorities that they would wed.

Larry and Jean go through with the ceremony, but further misunderstandings drive them apart again.  Peanuts and Eddie explain to Larry about the letters and their arrangement of the marriage, and Larry realizes that Jean is the right woman for him after all.

Meanwhile, Jean goes to the hotel room of Jose Lopez Rubenstein, a South American entrepreneur who wants Jean to appear in his nightclubs.  Jean is about to sign his contract when Larry, Peanuts and Eddie burst into the room.  Larry fights with Jose without letting him explain why Jean is there, until Jose withdraws to the next room to duke it out with Peanuts and Eddie.  Jose finally gets the two sailors to calm down and peek through the curtains into the next room, where Jean is tenderly kissing Larry's abrasions.  The three men begin to squabble again, however, when Jose claims that reconciling the lovers was all his idea.