The setting is a subterranean flat is Greenwich Village, the plot knows no limits, and for good measure Janet Blair is thrown into the cast with fiery Rosalind Russell to make "My Sister Eileen" a far from commonplace film. The screen version of this Fields and Chodorov comedy stage his naturally loses a bit of its original frankness at the hands of Columbia Studios, but the basic story of two would-be career girls from the midwest turned loose in a Hollywood version of old New York leaves plenty of room for the comic situations that develop.

Russell plays Ruth, the older and more practical of the two Sherwood sisters from Ohio, and Blair is the man-snaring sister Eileen, whose Hellenic qualities form the nucleus of a pell-mell plot that seldom leaves the disorderly Greenwich Village apartment. Ruth tries for writing fame, while Eileen makes a few half-hearted attempts to break into Gotham theatrical circles. Their efforts meet every grotesque obstacle known to the skillful playwright. Mashers wander through their flat at all times of the day and night, blasts from a new subway running underneath shatter their sleep, drunks peer at them through a street-level window, and a flabby pro football players from upstairs irons their clothes and sleeps in the kitchen. Six amorous Portuguese naval cadets finally cap the climax with a conga party that assumes riot proportions and nets Eileen a night in Jail. As this point, with Ruth's writing attempts apparently gone amuck and Eileen's acting aspirations overshadowed by an amusing assortment of male admirers, father and grandma arrive from Columbus to see how everything is going. The scene is black until magazine editor Brian Aherne comes through with a contract of Ruth and stage prospects for Eileen.

Aherne has a small, dull part and is, as a result, of little interest. Rosalind Russell, more attractive in many respects than Janet Blair, is for some odd reason overlooked by all the men until she finally gets Aherne. George Tobias plays a skillful Appopoulos, the loquacious landlord with an enlarged idea of his artistic abilities. The film's continual helter-skelter action makes most of the actors first-class candidates for an asylum, but it's only a story and as such is good entertainment.