Someone is murdering the cast and crew of a new Hollywood movie, and the leading lady may be next. As a police detective locks down the lot and refuses to let anyone leave, the studio’s publicity head and his secretary attempt to solve the murders themselves.
Carrie Snyder is a prostitute, who is forced out of the fictional southern town of Crebillon, after forming a friendship with a young boy named Paul, whose dying mother is unable to protest against her son visiting such a woman.
A newly hired police chief vows to clean up a notoriously corrupt police department. When he is murdered, investigators find that there is no shortage of suspects, most of them being fellow cops.
This short follows the early career of actress Jane Barnes. She starts by doing extra work. After several months she is offered a studio contract (the "first step").
With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston.