The film opens with a panning shot of neon signs against a night sky, probably in the North Beach section of San Francisco. The camera comes to rest on a sign spelling out "Mona's Candle Light" in blue script that fills the frame, then cuts immediately to the interior of Mona's where a woman, who has been identified as Jan Jensen, is singing. Although Mona's was known as a club that featured lesbian performers dressed as men, Jensen, a large women who resembles Kate Smith, wears a conventional evening gown, as she does in a still photograph with other performers, all of whom are dressed as men, taken in Mona's several years earlier.