The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.

Mario, a gangster, takes the fifth amendment when being questioned by the Senate Sub Committee on his connection with racketeering within the juke box industry. While in a small New Jersey town, teenagers Bob, Judy, Ginger, Seymour and Betty go to the train station to pick up Judy's cousin-from-Tennessee, Lulubelle . They take her to their local hangout, a pizzeria called "Mom & Pops", a broken down place ran by a couple named Mom and Pop.