OF ALL THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMEN this country ever sees, there is no doubt that the doll they call Sergeant Sarah Brown of the Save-A-Soul mission on Broadway, in Times Square of New York City, is the most beautiful.
Sister Sarah is maybe 26 years old, tall, and slender, and has a first-class shape, and her hair is of a dark brown shade, the color of black coffee, and her eyes are like you would not know what, except that they are one-hundred-per-cent eyes in every respect.
Furthermore, her beauty is not what you call "skin deep" because her heart, which is located under her skin, is as pure as spring water and her soul is gleaming white like driven snow, that should be an attraction to people who are into that kind of spiritual thing. Sister Sarah, as head of the mission which she operates with her Uncle Arvide Abernathy and a small staff of missionaries, is also known for her great charitable works of giving alms to the poor, feeding the hungry, and visiting the sick in the hospitals.
Good people's idea of beauty often requires that beautiful dolls also demonstrate some kind of a musical talent, and an ability to make impromptu speeches on a subject noble and advantageous to all humanity; and Sister Sarah never disappoints on those aspects, either, because she plays the tambourine in her mission band and delivers rousing speeches on the necessity for sinners to repent and give up sinful wastes of time and money, such as drinking and gambling, in order to get to heaven.
It is probably because Sister Sarah is so beautiful and so good that sinners who inhabit Times Square who are in the majority, while eager to lend her their eyes, are not so eager to lend their ears. Thus while they crowd to look at the beautiful mission doll march and denounce sin, her mission station remains empty and devoid of repenters seeking repentance.
One Tuesday morning, disheartened by her repeated failure to attract sinners, Sister Sarah finally decides to say goodbye to her uncle and mission staff and plans to go back to Boston, her hometown. When who comes knocking at the mission's door but a tall and handsome guy, immaculately dressed in expensive badass gangster suit, complete with a matching fedora hat.
His name is Sky Masterson, age 31, then unknown to Sister Sarah to be the highest gambler in all the land, and a notorious womanizer. The reason they call him Sky is because in all the gambling places in the country, whether in New Orleans, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, nobody bets higher than Sky in the games of craps, cards, horse races, baseball scores, and in what is called "propositions."
Sarah's Uncle Arvide is thrilled to have at least one sinner coming into the mission and figures she can take care of this one herself, for she is always able to solve other people's problems. So Arvide excuses himself and leaves the beautiful mission doll alone to deal with the handsome gambling guy.
But Sister Sarah is not impressed by the way handsome Sky Masterson tells of himself as unhappy for his successes as a gambler. She gets even more suspicious of his purpose in coming into the mission when he says even non-sinners, too, should come seeking repentance. If Sky Masterson is a thrill-seeker and thinks of seducing her as a past time, he is not doing it the right way. For he comes on too intense, like he is about to belt her with his charm, so much so that at least twice during the courtship, if you can call it a courtship, Sister Sarah feels like bursting into tears. But she is strong and never bursts into tears over a handsome gambling guy pouring out charisma.
Where she somewhat relents is when Sky Masterson points out that her "Thought of the Day" card misquotes the bible, which unfortunately proves him right upon her checking with the big book. And when he correctly guesses that her mission is failing, like a store selling repentance but with no sinners coming in to buy. Thus the guy proves not only handsome, but also smart, and therefore dangerous.
Eventually, the handsome, smart and dangerous Sky Masterson offers a business transaction, which he calls a "proposition," promising to deliver a dozen genuine sinners to her midnight prayer meeting on Thursday if she goes with him to Havana, Cuba for dinner on Wednesday night.
Now, everybody knows that Havana, Cuba, in those pre-Castro times, to be the devil's own den of iniquity, and so does Sister Sarah, or she is dumber than seems possible. And nobody ever figures Sgt. Sarah Brown dumb, as she is strong-minded, and seems plenty able to take care of herself, even on Broadway.
So feeling righteous and insulted by the handsome, smart and dangerous Sky Masterson's offer of a date in Havana, she angrily shows him the door, but before she knows it, he grabs her into his warm and powerful arms and steals a passionate, lingering kiss that Sarah Brown is bound to remember for the rest of her life. She counters it with a humiliating slap on one cheek, for which he threatens to come back to turn the other cheek, as advised by the good book in Matthew 5:39, which he points out.
Comes Wednesday morning and Sister Sarah is as clear-headed as ever, marching with the band and denouncing sin from her soapbox pulpit when she notices that Sky Masterson is stalking her for a good two blocks of Broadway. This is just too much, so she comes down from her soapbox perch and while he offers his other cheek for another slap, she tells him to stop cut it out and out of her sight. He then disappears which convinces her that she has finally driven away the prince of darkness.
When she and her crusading band come back to the mission, she finds her superior, General Matilda Cartwright who comes in from Boston with the bad news that the mission is closing down due to not having sinners come in for repentance. To her surprise, Sky Masterson comes out of his hiding place in the back room and offers her superior to stay for the Thursday midnight prayer meeting and see for herself a dozen sinners coming to save the mission. Then with a naughty smile, the handsome, smart, and dangerous gambling guy shows Sarah his marker from the previous day and she suddenly knows there is nothing she can do but go to dinner with him that night. By midafternoon, Sarah is on the plane with Sky to Havana.
Strong-minded that she is, Sister Sarah Brown does not easily take moral defeat from the devil lying down, what with the stripes she wears proudly on her red uniform. But she does not wear her red uniform at this time of the night; as it is a date with the handsome, smart and dangerous gambling guy, so Sarah chooses to wear a light lavender skirt suit with tiny flower-shaped buttons fastening down the length of the jacket's front opening.
At this point, she feels she has made good her part of the bargain and whether he makes good his promise to deliver a dozen genuine sinners to save the mission from closing down is no longer her concern, since the deal is now between Sky Masterson and her superior, General Cartwright.
Determined to fight the devil to the death, the most beautiful doll in all the land however continues to plan to beat the handsome, smart and dangerous high player of all, in his own game by making this dinner date as unpleasant to him as he can bear.
Sister Sarah is one heck of a smart doll and upon analyzing how Sky Masterson goes all out to steal a kiss, stalk her, hide in the back room and corner her on taking the trip to Havana, she suspects correctly that there is something bigger and more sinister an object of the game than herself that he is pursuing. That she has become an accessory to the game does not daunt her in the least, Pledging to uncover exactly what the mysterious force is, she decides to get in on the game herself and make the handsome, smart and dangerous guy to be the prize she must win.
She knows a little bit of psychology and how women can destroy men by way of wine and song. After all, if wine, women, and song is the formula that destroys men, why not the devil? So when Sky Masterson orders dulce de leche for her to drink at the Café El Cabana, she indulges herself until she is obnoxiously drunk and misbehaving. The alcohol she imbibes, the music and the dance give her the license to go all out to entice and destroy this charming devil, like the proverbial spider to the fly. In her drunkenness, she offers a personalized plan to save his soul, to cure him of problems imagined or otherwise, dances with him in the most alluring moves she is able to muster, and advances lots of hot passionate kisses he cannot refuse.
There is just one hitch which she easily wipes out like a piece of cake. A Cuban doll, likely a former lover of his, tries to steal Sky away from her. With a clinch and a right hook, Sarah sends her flying across the room and flat on the floor. That shakes Sky up more than somewhat and he comes to realize that the beautiful mission doll is a force to recon with. Leaving the nightclub in chaos, Sky hauls her to sober up by the fountain of a church garden. Now is the time for the coup d'grace, where Sarah begins to ravish the Sky devil and attempts to rape him to the death.
But his resolve to stay calm and act the gentleman to a drunken beauty attempting to rape him did not die. He stops her on her track by revealing the mysterious force that makes him to pursue all means to take her to Havana against all odds. The mysterious force turns out to be a sucker bet of $1,000 that his friend, an illegal craps operator named Nathan Detroit, lays on the line, with the hope that Sky fail to take her out to Havana.
Sarah laughs at the revelation and after calling Sky a chump, and steps away shaking her head. But it is too late. The game boomerangs on both of them, as Sky and Sarah watch themselves helplessly fall in love with each other.
The next night, Thursday, amidst great difficulties of gathering more than two dozens of his gambling cohorts, Sky herds them like a flock of sheep to the prayer meeting and makes good his marker.
Turbulence is expected to come and go between them, exposing Sky and Sarah's moral differences and lifestyles, at times even destroying their relationship. Once the handsome, smart and dangerous Sky Masterson even attempts to walk away, promising to leave town and never see Sergeant Sarah again. But looking at this beautiful, most pure and perfect mission doll with 100 per cent eyes in every respect, he cannot imagine how to live going forward without her.
So in the end, the prissy mission doll and the inveterate gambler marry each other. Whether or not they live happily ever after is up to them.