Mild mannered zoology professor Dr. David Huxley is excited by the news that an intercostal clavicle bone has been found to complete his brontosaurus skeleton, a project four years in the construction. He is equally excited about his imminent marriage to his assistant, the officious Alice Swallow, who is interested in him more for his work than for him as a person. David needs the $1 million endowment of wealthy dowager Mrs. Carleton Random to complete the project. Her lawyer, Alexander Peabody, will make the decision on her behalf, so David needs to get in his favor. However, whenever David tries to make a good impression on Peabody, the same young woman always seems to do something to make him look bad. She is the flighty heiress Susan Vance. The more David wants Susan to go away, the more Susan seems not to want or be able to. But David eventually learns that Alexander Peabody is her good friend...

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them. The film contains only one word of dialogue, spoken by an unlikely source.

Barbara is a very rich girl who falls in love with Norman Phiffier, a poor young man. She doesn't tell him who she really is and prepares to marry him. But, Mrs. Tuttle (Barbara's mother) doesn't want her daughter to mary such a poor man. So, she hires Norman at one of her big stores, and gives him the most difficult and disgusting works. She hopes that seeing Norman humiliated, Barbara will finally leave him. But things don't work exactly this way...

An artist has an opportunity to go to Paris and wants to bring his fiancee along. However, she's a psychiatrist who currently has three female patients who don't like men. So, he guises himself as three different men to gauge their trust and hopefully cure them so that his fiancee can go with him.

Paul Bratter, a conservative young lawyer, marries a vivacious young woman, Corrie. Their highly passionate relationship descends into comical discord in a five-flight New York City walk-up apartment.

Pete Stancheck inherits from his Uncle Jim Douglas a race car being stored in Puerto Vallarta. With his friend Davy Johns (D.J. to his friends) accompanying him to P.V., Pete is dismayed to learn that the car is an older model Volkswagen Beetle. But when Pete and D.J. see what the car can do and learn that it somewhat has a mind of its own, they decide to enter it into the Brazil Grand Primeo formula one race. En route to Rio de Janeiro, Herbie, the car, gets Pete and D.J. into one predicament after another as it tries to help its new friend, a streetwise orphan named Paco, who Pete and D.J. encountered in P.V. and who stowed away in Herbie's trunk. Because of these predicaments, Pete and D.J. end up requiring a quick influx of cash and slyly enlist the help of wealthy Louise Trent and her bookish niece, anthropology doctoral candidate Melissa, to be their financiers. Pete's role in the scheme is to woo the shy Melissa...