Joe Boyd is a middle-aged fan of the unsuccessful Washington Senators baseball team. His obsession with baseball is driving a wedge between him and wife Meg—a problem shared by many other wives of Senators supporters. Meg leads them in lamenting their husbands' fixation with the sport ("Six Months Out of Every Year").
Diwakar is a poet and loves his wife Jamuna on everything. But Jamuna does not agree that Diwakar lives out of sheer poetry in a fantasy world and the real world less and less responsible. Diwakar goes so far that he is a fantasy woman in his wife's body creates what he calls Mohini.
The film opens shortly before World War I. Raoul De Baere (Raft) is a dancer from New York City, aiming to become king of the European nightclub circuit. He tries to get Annette (famed exotic dancer Sally Rand) to be his dancing partner, but she refuses. He recruits Helen Hathaway (Lombard) instead and devises a very athletic routine to be accompanied by Ravel's Boléro (an anachronism, as the composition was not written until 1928).
Dick Thorpe (Nelson Eddy) is a football star for the Army, and Rosalie (Eleanor Powell), a Vassar student who is also a princess (Princess Rosalie of Romanza) in disguise, watches a football game. They are attracted to each other and agree to meet in her country in Europe. When Dick flies into her country he is greeted as a hero by the King (Frank Morgan) and finds Rosalie. Rosalie is engaged to marry Prince Paul (Tom Rutherford), who actually is in love with Brenda (Ilona Massey); Dick, not knowing of Prince Paul's affections, leaves the country. The King and his family are forced to leave their troubled country, and Dick and Rosalie are finally re-united at West Point.
Lord Shiva gives a sacred fruit, brought by the sage Narada, to his elder son Vinayaka as a prize for outsmarting his younger brother Muruga in a competition to win it. Angered by his father's decision, Muruga, dressed as a hermit, goes to Palani, despite Avvaiyar's attempts to convince him to return to Mount Kailash. His mother, goddess Parvati, arrives there and narrates the stories of four of Shiva's divine games to calm Muruga.