When the Patterson family wins $150,000 in a sweepstakes, family patriarch and frustrated drummer Sweeney decides to reassemble his old college
ragtime band. Sweeney's wife Elsie enrolls in an art school, eager to become a painter. Her brother Doc begins gambling on horse races. The Pattersons' daughter Mary attends an expensive boarding school while son Junior is enrolled in a military academy. Grandpa Casey disapproves, believing that the family should be more careful with the windfall. A young woman named Yolo joins Sweeney's band and immediately creates problems. Her jealous ex-convict boyfriend punches Sweeney in the nose. Elsie's art teacher disappears with her tuition fee. Mary's new beau Johnny Jordan and his father are appalled by the family's behavior, and she is expelled from school. The family slowly returns to poverty. Grandpa Casey, proven right about how the family handled its fortune, wins a small cash prize himself, and the family once again devises grand plans. == Cast ==