Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland), an innocent Amish girl from rural Pennsylvania, arrives in New York's Lower East Side hoping to make it as a dancer. Rachel's dances are based on Bible stories. She auditions at Minsky's Burlesque, but her dances are much too dull and chaste for the bawdy show. But then Billy Minsky (Elliott Gould) and the show's jaded straight man, Raymond Paine (Jason Robards), concoct a plan to foil moral crusader Vance Fowler (Denholm Elliott), who is intent on shutting down the theater. Minsky publicizes Rachel as the notorious Madamoiselle Fifi, performing the "dance that drove a million Frenchmen wild." This will invite a raid by Fowler and the police. But Billy will let Rachel perform her innocuous Bible dances, thus humiliating Fowler.