Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies. Carroll's annual "Vanities" provided story material for three Hollywood films: Murder at the Vanities (34), A Night at Earl Carroll's (40) and Earl Carroll Vanities (45). This last film was produced by Republic Pictures, a bread-and-butter studio specializing in Westerns and serials; Republic had made musicals before, but few of them were expensive enough to allow for lavish production numbers. Earl Carroll Vanities is likewise rather threadbare, though some of the individual musical highlights aren't bad. The plot, such as it is, concerns financially strapped nightclub owner Eve Arden, who finagles Earl Carroll into staging one of his revues at her club.
When Billy Carson's uncle is lynched as a supposed rustler, Billy arrives looking for the murderers. He finds that Steve Kirby holds a forged note on his Uncle's ranch. When Kirby sees that Billy means trouble for him, he has him framed for murder. Then just as he is inciting the mob to lynch him, Billy's new friend Doc Jones is trying to break him out of jail.
Billy Carson, looking for rustlers, kills Bradley in a gun fight. Arrested, the judge finds him innocent but jails him anyway. When the rustling resumes he is released and posing as a Mexican cattle buyer he hopes to trap the culprits.
Billy the Kid and Fuzzy Jones are on their way out of Arizona being chased by some riders who hope to cash in on the reward money for their capture. They are warned in time by Ed Dawson, but Ed is wounded in the getaway. They get a doctor to attend to Ed. The latter tells them there is a range war in progress across the border and that he is looking for men to help make a cattle drive to the rail junction.
Dorn is after the rancher's land and is trying to stop Banker Brady from helping them. When his man Hammond kills Brady, there is a run on the bank. When Rocky volunteers to ride to the next town for money, he is ambushed by Dorn's men, loses his memory, and is jailed for supposedly stealing the money.
Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.
