After the success of the live 1957 Cinderella on CBS (with Julie Andrews), the network decided to produce another television version. The new script hewed closer to the traditional tale, although nearly all of the original songs were retained and performed in their original settings. Added to the Rodgers and Hammerstein score was "Loneliness of Evening", which had been composed for South Pacific but not used.

When compulsive gambler Little Joe Jackson dies in a drunken fight, he awakens in purgatory, where he learns that he will be sent back to Earth for six months to prove that he deserves to be in heaven. He awakens, remembering nothing and struggles to do right by his devout wife, Petunia, while an angel known as the General and the devil's son, Lucifer Jr., fight for his soul.

Susan Miller works behind the girdle counter in a department store and dreams about the beautiful clothes and glamour she can never hope to have. Enter May Worthington and Warren, a pair of con artists who pose as the mother and uncle of a pretty girl in order to separate millionaires from their money. They convince Susan she has an opportunity to fulfill all her dreams, and the trio heads for Palm Beach. Susan meets John Wheeler who says he is shopping for a sailboat. Believing that he is a millionaire, Warren and May sell him a boat that doesn't belong to them, and make off with his $15,000 life savings. Looking for greener pastures, they work themselves into the family of wealthy Tod Fenwick, who falls for Sue, posing as "Linda Worthington". But John shows up as a guest of Fenwick and he tells "Linda", not knowing she was part of the scam, that he has a detective after the fake captain that sold him the boat. John admits that he is not a millionaire but only a $65-a-week clerk. He asks her to marry him and, over the protests of May, she accepts. Tod, who has been away, wires Linda a marriage proposal which is intercepted by Warren, who accepts on her behalf via a return wire. He intends to blackmail her into marrying Tod and then blackmail the Fenwicks into dissolving the marriage. To get John's money back to him, which she has but can't tell him, Linda enlists the aid of Colonel Prentiss who runs a gambling house, and the machines are fixed so that John wins his money back. Linda and John go to the terminal to leave, but Tod shows up and she tries to keep him away from John, who knows her as Sue.

A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City.

Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with foreclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.

After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her students.