The stage star Grace Hayes stars in this obscure little film. After years of being on the stage, she is going to visit a small college town to check up on her son who is being raised by his grandfather. The kid doesn't know who his mother is and when she sees him in a local malt shop, he's a boorish jerk. Part of the problem is that he is a college clown the other part is that he's really spoiled.
Interestingly, it turns out that Mom is really quite wealthy and has been not only funding her son's life but is a hefty contributor to the college. So, she has the idea of forcing the young man to mature. She talks to the man who's raising Peter and has his allowance cut off completely--hoping he'll rise to the occasion. It also turns out that she puts the screws to the school because she thinks all these kids need to stop playing around and be more responsible.
Now here's where it gets pretty dumb. To show that they know the value of hard work, she hires a bunch of them to sing and dance at the malt shop she just purchased. Talk about contrived!! What happens next is like a long and not particularly good talent show or perhaps a poor man's version of a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musical! I'd suggest the kids try to do something else to earn money...or perhaps sing and dance until people pay them to stop! I know I would pay them.
Considering that the talent is far from talented, Peter is a bad actor and his change from lout to responsible adult is almost instantaneous, the whole thing is a bit hard to take. Not a very good film by any sane standard, this is an obscure film that should have stayed obscure!
By the way, it is interesting that Ms. Hayes' son in the film, Peter, is actually her real life son. The only problem with that is that Peter Lind Hayes is a truly awful actor. He's not handsome enough to be a leading man and he comes off as either dull and uninteresting or downright obnoxious. In particular, all the stupid impressions he does are really bad and he has the charisma of the gelatin that you scrape off Spam. Despite this terrible performance, he did go on to have a reasonably successful acting career. Who would have believed it if you'd seen him in ZIS BOOM BAH--because here, he's about as welcome as the Bubonic Plague!!