Small Town Boy

In the small town of Fairview, next-door neighbors Henry Armstrong and Molly Summers are in love. One morning, after Henry's domineering mother orders him to give his brother Eddie, a poolroom loafer whom she coddles, three dollars, Henry says that he has no money, so his father Otis packs up his old checkered suit to sell to get the money. However, when Henry, knowing of his father's attachment to the suit, learns about this, he gives his father three dollars, which he has been saving to buy a house for him and Molly, and hides the suit in his closet. When Henry's boss, Curtis "Insurance-of-All-Kinds" French, who is Molly's uncle, threatens to fire him unless he sells insurance to Lafferty, the editor of the Fairview Chronicle , for all of the company's trucks, Henry tries but Lafferty orders him out. As Henry walks aimlessly and stops in front of a rummage sale, a woman gives him her baby to hold while she goes in, and another gives him the reins to her horse, John Henry. While the baby cries, John Henry eats Henry's hat. It falls to the ground, where Henry sees a portion of a thousand-dollar bill under the horse's hoof. Henry manages to get the bill and, thinking he should try to give it back to its rightful owner, puts an ad in the newspaper offering it to anyone who can claim it by its serial number. Learning about the ad, Lafferty orders his clerk to write a story about Henry's honesty, and when Henry's mother reads the story, she demands that Henry use the money to set up Eddie in business. After Molly's cousin Sandra talks Henry into going to a party at a cafe, he finds that he is expected to be the host, and he is besieged by Sandra's acquaintances, who sell him radios, insurance and an automobile, whose brakes break, causing him to have an accident. The next day, Henry finds many marriage proposals in his mail. When no one claims the bill, Henry, convinced that he is now a new man, confidently sells Lafferty a $50,000 life insurance policy using the same spiel as the man who sold him insurance in the cafe. Henry uses his commission to pay for the policy that he bought, then convinces French to increase his own life insurance to $75,000. With the commission on French's policy, Henry pays the cafe for the party. Deciding that he will keep the check to buy his home with Molly, he instructs his mother to tell Eddie to get a job and hides the envelope with the check in his father's checkered coat. Otis, lacking money to buy Henry and Molly a wedding gift, sells the coat to the junkman. When Henry finds this out, he and Otis race to the junkman, who says that he sold the coat to Trindle's Emporium. At Trindle's, Henry learns that the coat was stolen off a rack and that Trindle went to report the theft to the police. At the police station, Henry finds out that Trindle and the police have gone to the hobo jungle to look for the coat. Henry and Otis arrive there as the police are chasing the hoboes. Seeing the coat, Henry trades it for his own, and he is then arrested for stealing the coat. In court, after Henry tells his story, the judge discovers that the thousand-dollar bill is really an advertising enticement to shop at a furniture store. Trindle offers not to press charges if Henry pays him ten dollars for the coat, which has been ripped. After Molly reminds Henry how magnificent he was as a salesman when he thought he had the thousand dollars, he succeeds in selling Trindle insurance for a ten-dollar down payment. He and Molly then ask the judge to marry them.