Plot

Sign painters Joe and Lucky travel around New England looking for jobs. After Joe uses Madge as a model, she hides in their wagon. The painters are about to be charged with kidnapping until she promises to marry Joe. In New York he attempts to paint a huge sign that has stopped others before him.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

The romantic story of two dreamers; Joe Buck, a highly confident signboard artist who dreams of marrying a high-society heiress someday, and her face will be like the face on the billboards that sells beauty creams; and Madge, a young girl working on a New England farm who dreams only of having a home and happiness. When her prospective bridegroom, son of the farm-owner, shows signs of not being the man-in-her-dreams, she decides to search elsewhere and hides in Joe Buck's equipment wagon and neither Joe nor his partner, Lucky, knows she is there, although Joe became rather smitten with her when she posed earlier as the model for one of his out-door billboards. When discovered, she and Joe are moving right along down the romance road but, alas, Farmer Brown and son show up, toss around charges of kidnapping, and take Madge back to the farm. But the ever-turning wheel-of-fate still has a few more turns to take.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>

Traveling sign painter Joe Buck, whose ambition is to rise to the top and marry a beautiful "dame" whose father owns a railroad, considers himself an artist. With his partner Lucky, Joe arrives at the Brown farm where he convinces hostile Pa Brown to let him paint a huge ad on his barn for "Beauty Magic for the Forgotten Woman" in exchange for a phony watch. Madge, the Brown's naïve and sheltered ward who is to marry the Brown's son Jim, admires Joe's painting and independence. After Jim captures Madge's pet lamb, Joe knocks out Jim and drives off with Lucky only to discover Madge and the lamb hiding in their truck. Jim and Pa chase them to Circleville, where a carnival is in progress. After Joe buys Madge a dress and takes her away from a designing fortune-teller, Professor Triplett, Joe kisses Madge goodnight on her cheek. The kiss moves to Madge's lips, and Joe says he's "daffy" about her. Just then, Pa and Jim, accompanied by the Circleville sheriff, arrive, and when they threaten Joe with a penitentiary sentence for spending the night with a minor after crossing state lines, Madge says she will marry Jim if the charges are dropped. Joe and Lucky leave for New York, and Ma Brown, seeing Madge crying, gives her money to follow Joe. In New York, Joe has to paint a massive portrait of celebrity Sharon Hadley atop the city roofs to advertise a beauty product. Although he seems interested in Sharon's flirtations, he paints Madge's picture instead. Madge, meanwhile, wanders through the city, and she is lured by Triplett to his apartment, where she sees her face in the sky through Triplett's telescope. She escapes, hides in Joe's truck again, and as Joe and Lucky drive off, tells a happy Joe that she has come to marry him