Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in 1951, the storyline focuses on a bright and promising young man from a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, who gets a scholarship to attend a small college in Ohio and thus avoids being drafted,but whose ethical principles and nonconformism set him to clash with the people around him and, most importantly, with the dean of the college.

A racist, anti-Semitic French businessman on his way to his daughter's wedding unwittingly stumbles on a group of Arab terrorists. He is forced to disguise himself as a Hasidic Jewish rabbi, which leads to one crazy slapstick situation after another.

Dealing openly with anti-Semitism and Nazi atrocities, the story spans World War I, Prohibition and the prelimanary volley of World War II. Fanny (Bette Davis) thrives on the adulation of countless suiters before and after she marries Job Skeffington (Claude Rains). Ravaged by age and illness, Fanny clings to Job's promise that "a woman is beautiful only when she is loved."