The film stars Fredric March and Carole Lombard; March plays a star reporter for a New York paper whose just been fooled by what ought to have been a big story. The newspaper had thrown a large dinner party, with an African prince. Well, that's what the reporter, and therefore everybody else in that room believed, that is until the "prince's" wife and kids show up with a cop, and the cover is blown; the man is really some local bootlegger out to make a bigger scam. The publisher is so embarrassed by March's slip that he forces the faux prince to work for the paper as a coffee boy, and demotes the reporter to the obituaries (the publisher gets a good line "I'm going to remove him (the reporter) from the land of the living!"). The reporter, naturally, feels slighted by this demotion, reminding the publisher that he's brought in dozens of scoops, and even right now has a story that he knows readers would love; the story of a rural woman dying from radiation poisoning. The publisher reluctantly allows him to take on this story, and that's where the fun begins. When he gets to the little backwater village, March has to contend with townsfolk whose desire to chat up guests appear extremely limited, and whose personalities are all suspicious of big city folk (and whose children apparently like to bite slick newspaper reporters in the legs!). And when he meets the woman, little does he suspect that once this story reaches its conclusion, he might find himself down to working at the classifieds section!
The woman, played by Lombard, is not dying from any disease. Well, actually, originally she was led to believe otherwise, but the local town doctor is also the local town drunk, and managed just to make this one silly mistake. Too bad for her, because she was really hoping to go to New York before she died. Well, just her luck when the reporter shows up, tells her how tragic it must be to be dying of such a deadly disease, and offers her a free trip to NYC, so she could have a blast before she passes on, and the newspaper readers can have something to sob over. And like anyone wanting to get away from the boredom of small town life, she takes it, conveniently forgetting the fact that she's as healthy as a horse.
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