The Hudson River Day Line boat "The Catskill" is under way on a summer day (“We’re on Our Way”). The boat stops for fifteen minutes at Poughkeepsie, New York. Dick Rivers comes aboard and tells Victoria Lake and the girls that he has fallen in love with Elsie Lilly, the star pupil of the great voice teacher Madame Matroppo (“The Same Old Game”). To be alone with Elsie, he persuades Madame Matroppo to let him interview her pupil for a magazine article. Elsie is not easily wooed. She tells Dick that she used to be engaged to a man named Eddie. She has heard that Dick is always in love with the next girl he meets (“Some Sort of Somebody”).