While participating in a contest at a local newspaper in which school children are asked to submit a news story, local attorney Carson Drew's daughter Nancy intercepts a real story assignment. She "covers" the inquest of the death of a woman who was poisoned. Nancy doesn't think the young woman accused of the crime is guilty and corrals her neighbor Ted into searching for a vital piece of evidence, and they stumble onto the identity of the real killer.
Although a one-time MVP for the New York Yankees, Jack Elliott is now on the down side of his baseball career. His batting average is low and one of his few claims to fame is that during the previous year, he led the team in 9th inning doubles in the month of August. With an up and coming slugger ready to replace him, he learns that he's been traded to the Chunichi Dragons of the Japanese Central baseball league. Elliott is set in his ways and quite inflexible, not only in accepting Japanese culture in general, but also with the way the baseball team is managed. When he meets his very pretty PR agent, Hiroko, he begins to gain a greater appreciation that he should accept his current situation. When he realizes her other connection to the team, his attitudes begin to change at an even greater pace
Rory Calhoun, Paul Kelly and John Abbot are beachcombers/semi-derelicts on an unnamed but well-policed tropical island. Kelly, a sea captain in disgrace, is ordered to pilot a ship full of champaigne to Sydney, that has been lying in the harbor since its captain and most of the crew died of plague. He takes the other two along and plans on sailing elsewhere to sell the cargo. After anchors aweigh, they discover that Rhonda Fleming, the daughter of the deceased captain, is on board. This complicates matters, as does a fire on board, as does the discovery that the champaigne cargo is really water. They arrive at an uncharted island ruled by Alan Napier, a sophisticated British gentleman who is several cards short of playing with a full deck. Crazy as a bedbug. More complications arise, such as snake pits and acid-assassination attempts. Napier likes to keep his island tidy...something Sam Newfield was unable to do with this film as the director. At PRC, he was used to Buster Crabbe and "Fuzzy" St. John riding in and connecting the dots.
This film is a remake of the silent film Ebb Tide (1922) and the film Ebb Tide (1937), all based on the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne.