Red lets her have a bath and allows her a night's stay but insists that she leave the following day when they will search for new lodgings for her. Neither does she want to go to her parents because of her father, so Red takes her back to his place. Later, after learning that Max had been attacked by a gang, Gwen doesn't want to go back to her lodgings because of Jimmy. Believing that the jewellery belonged to his mother, Gwen follows his instructions. He steals their landlady's jewellery and tells Gwen to pawn it for him. Angry at Gwen, who he feels has lost him his job, Jimmy plots to set her up. Max discovers what Jimmy has done and fires him. He grows angry about the growing relationship between Red and Gwen and beats her. Jimmy attempts to pursue Gwen but is rejected. While working she meets "Red" Farrell, a bandmember for the club, who feels the need to look after her well-being. Having checked out her shapely legs Max employs her as a hat-check girl. Jimmy tells her to go to the Blue Angel Nightclub where she meets his employer Max Vine, the boss of the club. There, she meets Jimmy Rosso, a sharply-dressed man who immediately takes a liking to her good looks. The next day Gwen packs her things and moves into a boarding house. When she arrives home and informs her father, he beats her. Though Gwen had only borrowed it to use for a dance and had every intention of returning it, she is fired. Gwen's first troubles begin with her employer who catches her "borrowing" a brooch from his pawnshop. Gwen Rawlings is a 16-year-old girl who repeatedly falls into the wrong crowd. Miss Thorpe tells Lyla that her life has a similar beginning to that of Gwen Rawlings.
The film opens with Miss Thorpe, the chairman of the Juvenile Court, giving advice to troubled teenager Lyla Lawrence.