Social drama set in the Berger household in the Bronx.
The Berger children, Ralph and Hennie, dream of breaking away from their bourgeois environment. Dominating the household is their mother Bessie, stifling their complaints, deriding her weak husband Myron, and mocking her father Jacob, who finds solace in his Enrico Caruso records. Hennie discovers she is pregnant, but when the father cannot be found, Bessie arranges a match with Sam Feinschreiber, a timid and unsuspecting clerk.
The following year, Ralph discovers that the baby born to his sister after her marriage is not Sam's. Appalled by his mother's role in snaring the unsuspecting Sam and frustrated by Bessie 's refusal to countenance the girl he loves, he turns on his mother and father. In the furore that follows, Bessie breaks her father's records. Jacob leaves to walk the dog on the roof, and moments later the janitor reports that he has fallen from the roof and been killed.
Now Bessie and Uncle Morty conspire to keep the insurance money from Ralph, who is the beneficiary of Jacob's policy. But their lodger, Moe Axelrod, a one-legged, cynical veteran, claims to have found a suicide note under Jacob's pillow and threatens, if they cheat Ralph of his claim, to disclose that the death was not accidental.
Axelrod, having loved Hennie secretly for years, now persuades her to risk a new life with him. She leaves the baby in her mother's care, and together they leave the Berger household. With the shock of Jacob's death, Ralph's energy and hope return; he decides to stay and build a new future.