Crabtree and Higgings great enjoy the vaudeville, so are shocked afterward to learn the standard public prize winner, monologue humorist comedian Bert Grady, whim the offered in vain their own cop jokes, was fatally shot in a poor quarter street. Murdoch fears it wasn't a robbery, so goes through the heater staff and vaudeville competitors, including his former partner Ed Ward, and new public's favorite W.C. Fields, while Crabtree and Higgins go undercover as newly recruited artists, parodying Murdoch and Brackenreid, who enjoy it all less then Julia but Crabtree's girl not at all, regardless of his stage freight debacle debut. Grady had an affair with manager Lewis Moffat's adulterous wife Eleanor and Bert's notebooks full of jokes were apparently stolen from the tacky hotel room where they met. Yet an inconspicuous clue to an older crime proves crucial.
—KGF Vissers