Plot

A minority stockholder takes on the crooked board of directors at a billion dollar corporation.

Laura Partridge (Judy Holliday) is a very enthusiastic small stockholder of 10 shares in International Projects, a large corporation based in New York City. She attends her first stockholders meeting ready to question the board of directors from their salaries to their operations. These are not the questions which the board expected to be asked of them, especially since they are all crooked, except for Edward McKeever (Paul Douglas), the current CEO who has resigned in order to take an advisory position at the Pentagon. Following the meeting, he bumps into Laura and offers to drive her home. On the way there, Laura displays her enthusiasm for being a stockholder, as a result, Edward takes a liking to her. With Edward in Washington, D.C., John Blessington (John Williams) and Clifford Snell (Fred Clark) establish their hold on International Projects. They see greater riches now that Edward has influence with the U.S. Senate, especially with the awarding of federal contracts; unfortunately for them, he is honest, and won't do their bidding. In the meantime, Laura continues to be a nuisance to the board. Blessington believes the only way to silence her is to give her a high-paying position with the company. The idea is for her to do absolutely nothing, but Laura has other plans. She begins to correspond with other small stockholders in the company, a problem for the board. They decide to use her influence on Edward and send her to Washington, D.C. to get contracts. Laura, now knowing their true intentions for her, has her own agenda, that is, get Edward back in charge of the company.—Kelly

It is the Annual General Meeting of International Projects, a large listed company. The board of directors are a shady lot, but none of the shareholders ever question their decisions or vote against their motions--until now. Laura Partridge (Judy Holliday), a minor shareholder, starts to ask some pretty important questions--questions which the directors don't like. In the aftermath of the meeting, the directors are worried that she will form a committee of minority shareholders, and exercise some control of the company. In order to keep her quiet and in line, they offer her a job in the company, as Director of Shareholder Relations. The idea is to give her nothing to do, but Laura has other plans.—grantss

Inheriting ten shares of the company's stock, struggling New York actress Laura Partridge, who has no experience with the workings of multinational corporations, decides to attend an International Projects' stockholders' meeting to understand what is happening with her money in those ten shares. She will discover that this meeting will introduce a change to the Board as company founder Edward L. McKeever is stepping down as President and Board Chair having been seconded, appointed directly by the President of the United States, to a position in procurement for the Department of Defense in Washington, DC, he necessarily having sold his company shares to avoid conflict of interest, with John T. Blessington taking over as President and Board Chair. While McKeever is an ethical and hard working man, Blessington and the rest of the Board executive are less than ethical in only looking out for their own personal interests. On the surface, Laura doesn't like what she sees especially in bloated salaries for the Board executive. In meeting after meeting, Laura is able to be enough of a thorn in the Board executives' sides that Blessington decides that the best tact in dealing with her is to hold her close by offering her a made-up executive position within the company as Director of Shareholder Relations, her responsibilities to answer any correspondence received by shareholders, such correspondence which is basically non-existent. In being on the inside, Laura, despite her naiveté, knows what she believes is best for the company and for the plethora of minor shareholders like herself, namely for McKeever to return to the company, which is the last thing Blessington and the other Board executives want in expecting McKeever to direct government contracts in International Projects' direction to line their pockets further, and in not wanting to relinquish their control of the company. Things only get more complicated when Laura and McKeever fall in love, and they learn that Blessington never had any intention of relinquishing control back to McKeever despite Blessington bestowing upon McKeever as a going away gift a master "golden key", which opens any lock at International Projects, as a symbol of he being welcomed back at any time.—Huggo