Plot
Aloyisius T. McKeever (Victor Moore), a New York City hobo, makes his home in a boarded-up Fifth Avenue mansion, using the back door, while its owner, multi-millionaire ("the second richest man in the world") Michael J. O'Connor (Charles Ruggles), winters in the South. McKeever winds up taking in homeless ex-G.I. Jim Bullock (Don DeFore), who has been evicted from an apartment building O'Connor is tearing down for a new skyscraper, and runaway 18-year-old Trudy "Smith" (Gale Storm) who, unknown to him, is O'Connor's daughter. Soon Jim invites war buddies Whitey (Alan Hale, Jr.), Hank (Edward Ryan) and their families to share the vast mansion while they seek permanent homes of their own.
Trudy falls in love with Jim, and when her father demands to meet him, convinces O'Connor to also take up residence, pretending to be the panhandler "Mike", to win Jim's love without the temptation of marrying her for her wealth. McKeever "allows" Mike to move in, but treats him as a servant. When Mike warns Trudy that he intends to have them all arrested for criminal trespass, she persuades her mother Mary (Ann Harding) to fly up from Florida and pretend to be the 11th interloper, a cook. Mike has one of his construction companies bribe Jim with a great job offer in Bolivia, but Jim turns it down to pursue his dream.
The ex-GIs have an idea to buy a former Army camp and convert its barracks into inexpensive family housing. Unbeknownst to either side, Mike and Jim get into a bidding war for the camp the GI's are trying to buy, which Mike wants for an air cargo terminal. In the meantime, Mike and Mary reconcile when she believes he has changed. All are celebrating Christmas Eve together, forgetting to hide as usual from the patrolmen who check the house every night, but the patrolmen agree to let the families stay until after the New Year. Jim reveals that he and his partners have lost the camp to Michael J. O'Connor, and when Mike later defends his business dealings to Mary, she tells him he hasn't changed after all.
His dream shattered, a depressed Jim takes the job offer in Bolivia, breaking off with Trudy. Mary and Trudy angrily tell Mike they are leaving for Florida the next day because of the way he has manipulated Jim. McKeever is also depressed and tells Mike he is going to find another mansion to live in next winter. Mike spins a tale that he has arranged a meeting with O'Connor for Jim and his partners, who are dubious but accept. They are astounded to learn that Mike is O'Connor. He transfers the camp to them on the condition that they never reveal his true identity to McKeever. That night everyone is reunited and share a celebratory dinner before putting the house back "just the way we found it". They see the still-unaware McKeever off as he heads to the O'Connors' mansion in Virginia, and Mike tells Mary that next year McKeever will be coming in through the front door.
Read more about this topic: It Happened On Fifth Avenue
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“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)