Elly Jordan (Dick Powell) is a musician from Brooklyn on his way out west. But he and the other two in his trio get caught riding in a boxcar for free and are tossed off the train somewhere in Wyoming. They come upon a dude ranch - a working ranch that also functions as a hotel/resort for "tenderfoots" seeking the western ranch experience. At first the daughter in the family, Jane Hardy (Priscilla Lane) thinks Elly is just another tramp and refuses his offer of working for food. Then she has second thoughts and hires Elly and his trio as musical entertainment.
Because the ranch is catering to easterners looking for that western authenticity, Jane teaches Elly how to talk, walk, and act like a genuine westerner. It works so well that when an agent on the verge of a nervous breakdown (Pat O'Brien) and his assistant (Ronald Reagan) show up for a relaxing stay at the ranch, they are completely taken in by Elly's act and sign him to a radio contract as Wyoming Steve Gibson, a genuine singing cowboy who can also rope and ride.
Complicating factors include the fact that Elly has a phobia of all animals - from the big ones you should be afraid of like bulls, to the tiniest creatures like gophers and canaries. Also, an actual singing cowboy at the ranch resents how well Elly is doing both career-wise and with Jane and knows that Elly is a city slicker. Complications ensue.
This is passable entertainment, but it seems like Warner Brothers was struggling for a reason to make this movie in the first place. It's like they realized they wanted a Dick Powell film so there would have to be a musical theme of course, but had to strain to come up with anything past that. So they added a Western theme - Powell had never done one of those before - and then strained to fill 75 minutes with .... something. As a result it has dull stretches and pointless stretches. 15 minutes could have been cut and it would have lost nothing.
