Plot

Three ex-cons buy a luggage shop to tunnel into the bank vault next door. But despite all they can do, the shop prospers.

Three bumbling crooks buy a store so that they can rob the bank next door. When they soon discover the money they can make as legitimate businessmen, they abandon their plan. Trouble is, one of their cohorts, who's escaped from jail, won't let them.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>

On release from Sing Sing, 'Pressure' Maxwell wants to go into legal business; his pal 'Jug' Martin would rather join fellow inmate Leo's bank robbery scheme. A compromise is reached when Pressure buys a luggage shop next to the bank in question. Pressure, Jug, and their friend Weepy prove the most incompetent burglars ever seen, but their biggest problem is keeping paying customers out of the store! Should they give up crime? That path has unexpected roadblocks...—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>

After spending time in jail for a career as a con man and thief, J. Chalmers 'Pressure' Maxwell (Edward G. Robinson, in a counter-role to his usual tough-guy image) determines to live an honest life when he is released from jail. The day he is released, his lunkhead fellow inmate Jug Martin (Broderick Crawford) is also released, and they are met by "Pressure's" fellow partner in crime, Weepy Davis (Edward Brophy). Staying behind in prison is hardened criminal Leo Dexter (Anthony Quinn)...who has vowed to escape and blow open a bank.

In order to lead the honest life he pledges, Maxwell hopes to purchase a down-and-out dog track in Florida. For that, he needs $25,000. He tries to borrow the money honestly from the bank (although Jug and Weepy are all for breaking into the bank and stealing it) but because Maxwell has no collateral, the bank turns him down. Determined to follow the straight-and-narrow, Maxwell decides to steal the money from the bank's vaults after all. He scopes out a struggling luggage store next to the bank with a basement next to the bank's vaults. While Weepy is downstairs checking out the store's basement (pretending to be a gas meter reader), Maxwell finds that the owner (Homer Bigelow, played by Harry Davenport) is eager to sell the store. Well, owning the store would make it much easier to tunnel under the bank's vault than having to find reasons to go into the store's basement, and Maxwell raises the the $1,000 purchase price by throwing Jug in front of a passing car for a quick on-the-street cash settlment between him and the car's driver.

So now Maxwell owns a luggage store, which he has no interest in but which attracts more of a crowd than he wants. In the first place, the street is being torn up for subway construction, and the local store owners (including a ditzy lingerie shop widow!) keep dropping in to say hi and see if Maxwell can do anything about the construction company's snail-like pace, which is keeping traffic away from the street--and their stores. Then there's a pushy charmer of a salesman for the Hotchkiss Luggage Company (Jeff Randolph, played by Jack Carson) who finagles Weepy into buying a whole new spring line of luggage. Then there's Maxwell's lovely adopted daughter, Denny Costello (Jane Wyman), whom Maxwell told on his first day out of the slammer that he was going straight. She drops in when she discovers that he has bought the luggage store, not altogether convinced that he is serious about his pledge to go straight.

In the meantime, Maxwell, Jug (who has eyes on Denny), and Weepy begin to dig down through the luggage store's basement floor to tunnel over to the bank's vault. Denny discovers the plan from Jug, and enlists Randolph's help in foiling Maxwell's plan--by making the luggage store so popular the three partners have no time to tunnel. The plan works--and what's more, Maxwell becomes a kind of local hero when he gives in to the pressure from the other storekeepers and talks with the construction company's owner to speed up the process. They don't know it, of course, but Maxwell knows the owner from his life of crime and although Maxwell privately assures the owner that he has nothing to worry about, to take all the time he wants in the construction, the construction owner thinks Maxwell is going to spill the beans about the project's contract (apparently illegally gotten) and hurries the construction along so fast it's done in three weeks. That's just in time for Christmas. This makes the other store owners thrilled, and they nearly canonize Maxwell for his effort.

The plan by Denny and Jeff to make the luggage store incredibly popular goes over so well that Maxwell decides to close the store temporarily (for "alterations) so that they can dig. All this time, Jug has been pushing for a simple dynamiting job to get through the wall, but Maxwell believes that would bring the police from all over the neighborhood. The tunneling continues, with the hefty dumb Jug doing most of the digging. He's getting impatient, and keeps lobbying Maxwell for the dynamite scheme, but Maxwell holds firm to the more innocuous but protracted tunneling plan. In fact, after the bank next door offers to buy the luggage store so that they can expand their business (going so much better now that the subway project is done and the street is open), Maxwell gives in to pressure from Denny and Jeff and the success of the store, abandons the dog track plan, and decides to stay right there as owner of the luggage store.

Then Leo shows up. Leo's plan always was to blow open a bank to rob it, and when he discovers Maxwell's plan, he wants in. Trouble is, Maxwell has already decided to sell the successful store back to Homer Bigelow, the original owner. The night of Leo's planned explosion--Christmas Eve--Maxwell is playing Santa Claus at a party. He returns to the store to meet Bigelow. He finds Leo there, in the middle of the plan. Leo, in an effort to prevent the sale, who clubs him over the head and dumps him behind the counter. Before falling unconscious, Homer trips the burgler alarm. Leo attempts to shoot Homer, but Maxwell stops him, and Leo knocks him unconscious too.

Meanwhile, a crowd gathered outside the store. As two of his goons blow the basement, Leo runs out and straight into the arms of the police. But his two goons botch the explosion. The explosion turns the basement of the store into an inferno, and Maxwell and the unconscious Bigelow are stuck inside the smoky store. Worried about Maxwell and Bigelow, members of the crowd anxiously try to get inside the store to save them but are held back by the police. Maxwell himself wakes up, drags Bigelow out and cements his reputation as a solid citizen, stand-up guy, and neighborhood saint. Leo winds up going back to prison, Maxwell stays in business, making plans for to replace the burned-out store with an even bigger store--and a chain of luggage stores. Of course, poor Jug, Jeff and Denny get married.