When reporter Dan Miller is once again late to meet his girl friend, Helen Murdock, because he is working on a story, Helen breaks up with him. Later, in an effort to reconcile with her, Dan misses an appointment with the district attorney, and is fired when his editor learns that the district attorney was murdered in Dan's absence. The man suspected of the crime, Mitts Coster, is rumored to be traveling to Europe aboard an ocean liner. While Dan's friend, photographer Snapper McGillicuddy, fetches Helen to the boat, under the pretense that Dan is leaving town to forget her, Dan searches the ship for Mitts, whom he does not recognize. When Helen arrives, Dan feigns illness, and she admits her love for him. When Helen learns of Dan's ruse, however, she angrily hits him with a package that a passenger gave her when she boarded the ship. The package contains a passport for Dorothy Madden, who greatly resembles Helen, and $2,000 dollars.

The Daring Young Man is hotshot-reporter Don McLane, played by James Dunn. Always on the prowl for a good story, McLane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister Martha Allen (Mae Clarke). After several reels of double-crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. But as Martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, McLane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system.

Though he was protecting her when he accidentally killed a man, Mabel Kane (Thelma Todd) refuses to testify on behalf of her dance partner Jerry Davis (George Murphy), and he's sent to jail. In a riot, a hostile convict (Jack La Rue) forces Jerry to help him escape, so Jerry takes to the streets himself. Nightclub entertainer Anne Taylor (Nancy Carroll) meets him, and convinces her boss Louis (Arthur Hohl) to hire him as her partner.

A sleazy lawyer's female assistant sets out to end his cheating ways.

A rogue reporter trailing a runaway heiress for a big story joins her on a bus heading from Florida to New York and they end up stuck with each other when the bus leaves them behind at one of the stops along the way.