Professional Sweetheart 1933

Glory Eden, Ginger Rogers is the Purity Girl of the Ippsie Wippsie Hour radio program. The show’s sponsor, Sam Ipswich, Gregory Ratoff, discovered the orphan and made her a star in three months. He needs her public image to match her pure radio persona to promote Ippsie Wippsie, the washcloth of dreams. However, Glory longs to be a party girl who frequents nightclubs where she can drink, dance and meet men. She listens with envy as her black maid Vera, Theresa Harris, describes the nightlife in Harlem. Ipswich is eager for her to sign a new contract, but she throws a tantrum and refuses because it explicitly prohibits all the things that she wants to do.

Along with everything else that Glory has missed, she wants a sweetheart. Speed Dennis, Frank McHugh, Ipswich’s press agent, considers this a great idea and thinks the man should be Anglo-Saxon (to appeal to the Corn Belt), and Herbert, Glory’s dressmaker, insists that he should be under 25. Ipswich’s secretary tells them that the “purest Anglo-Saxons” hail from the hills of Kentucky, so Glory chooses a fan letter at random from those written by young Kentucky men. Her selection is 23-year-old Jim Davy, Norman Foster, and she likes his photo. Ipswich, Speed and Herbert want her to choose someone else, but when sob sister reporter Elmerada de Leon, Zasu Pitts, comes to interview Glory, she spots the photo, so they must play along.

Speed visits Kentucky to persuade the bashful Jim to accept a 10-day stay in New York. When Jim arrives in New York, the press expects him to marry Glory, so Speed prompts him to romance her. The wedding is conducted on the air.

Tim Kelsey, Edgar Kennedy, assigns O’Connor to steal Glory for his own radio program. O’Connor offers to help Jim and Glory sneak away for a private honeymoon in Atlantic City, away from the press. Jim is stunned to discover O’Connor’s motive and that the marriage is merely a publicity stunt. At first, Jim insists that Glory wants to retire from showbusiness and settle down, but when she learns that the Kelsey contract has no restrictions on her lifestyle, she is eager to sign. Jim takes Glory to his home in rural Kentucky.

As Jim and Glory are settling into country life, Speed arrives and unsuccessfully attempts to persuade Glory to return to New York. He then hatches a plan for Ipswich to let Vera sing as the Purity Girl that night, but the idea backfires. Glory becomes jealous, as he intended, but O’Connor is present and she signs his contract. When the couple return to New York, Jim refuses to let his wife perform without him. Speed has hired him for Ippsie Wippsie as a poet. To solve the problem, the two sponsors merge their companies to form Ippsie-Kelsey Clothies and they have Jim and Glory perform together.