Jill Young lives in the deepest, darkest part of Africa.  One Day, while her father is away, she notices to native trappers who have captured a baby gorilla and has her heart set on buying him from them.  Gathering her few possessions as well as her fathers flashlight, she strikes a bargain with them and names the gorilla Joe.  Taking the gorilla into her father's room, she hides the infant Joe in bed to surprise her father and she succeeds.  Her father warns that Joe may be fun now but he'l grow into a big gorilla and be dangerous.  You would hardly believe it as Joe slowly drifts to sleep nursing on a baby bottle with the tune, Beautiful Dreamer, playing on the music box.

12 years later, in a different type of jungle, Max O'Hara is trying to put together a big show.  He's looking for acts to reflect a wilderness theme when a Cowboy, Ben Johnson, steps into the room looking for a job.  Max hears his idea about going into Africa and roping wild animals to use in his nightclub and sets up an expedition.  

Max uses the expedition to exploit the upcoming nightclub by writing a series of highly exaggerated articles about his adventures fighting off pygmies and other creatures of his own imagination.  The safari has been a huge success with the cowboys having roped several animals for Max's club.  While preparing his latest adventure their camp is disrupted by a loud grunting sound as the natives run terrified through the camp.  A huge gorilla has begun tampering with a lion in a cage and in the process destroys the cage and frees the lion.  The cowboys mount their horses and try to capture the gorilla who seems more interested in playing with them then harming them.  Ropes are thrown around him but nothing seems to hold him very long.  Max finally arrives at the scene with his horse wildly out of control when the gorilla reaches down from a ledge and picks him off his horse.  The gorilla has tired of the game and is annoyed that they won't leave him be as he is about to hurl Max to the ground.  Suddenly a striking young woman steps in.

"Put him down Joe" she shouts.   

The gorilla is reluctant to stop playing with his new toy but eventually is convinces by the now grown Jill Young to do as she says.  She warns the Safari that they are on her land and that they must leave.

Later that day, Ben Johnson approaches Jill to try and make her understand that they didn't mean to do any harm to Joe. When she consents to let him into yard, Max appears from behind a tree.  He wants to make Jill a star along with Joe in his nightclub.  Having been living in the wilds of Africa for so long, Jill is intrigued by the prospect of fame and glamour but reluctant to leave her home.  As Max begins to loudly proclaim his own virtues, Joe arrives and thinks that Max is intending some harm on Jill.  Once again it is Jill who calms the mighty Gorilla.

Back a Max's nightclub, opening night is at hand.  The crowd is intermingled with newspaper reports all of which are anxious to discover just who this Mighty Joseph Young is.  Finally Max takes the stage and introduces Jill, who has now been done over and exchanged her dungarees for a flowing evening gown.  She sits at a piano and begins playing Beautiful Dreamer as the crowd begins to think that Max has flipped his lid.  Suddenly the floor of the stage begins to move as Joe lifts Jill still playing on her piano.  The orchestra joins in as Joe holding the platform with Jill and the piano begins to rotate and the audience is thrilled.

Mac begins devising schemes to keep drawing in crowds like a rope pulling contest with Joe against 12 of the strongest men.  But Jill notices that Joe isn't happy.  He has been forced to live below the nightclub in a large cell.  She begins trying to talk Max into breaking her contract so she can take Joe home but Max keep stalling her.  The final straw comes when Max dresses Jill up as an organ grinder and Joe as a monkey as the nightclub crowd tosses discs at Joe.  Joe begins to react wildly and the act comes to an abrupt stop.  Joe is returned to his prison and Jill and Ben decide that enough is enough.

Three drunks, feeling that they have been ripped off, sneak backstage to get a better look at Joe.  They find his cage and begin taunting the mighty gorilla.  They decide to get Joe drunk and start giving him liquor until Joe becomes violent and begins breaking the bars of his cage.  The drunks flee back into the club as Joe burst through the African decorations of the stage.  The crowd panics trying to get out as Joe continues destroying the nightclub.  He tosses a chair into the glass cages that have kept live lions on view to the nightclub crowd.  The glass shatters and the lions are free.  Max, Jill and Ben arrive in time to get Joe back to his cell as they hear the shots of policemen shooting the lions.

Because of the destruction, Joe is deemed a danger and the courts decree that he must be terminated.  Max decides to finally help Jill get Joe back to Africa.  Loading Joe onto a truck the night the decree is to be filled, the police give chase.  In an effort to escape Ben drives the truck down a dirt road and soon comes upon an orphanage that is in flames.  Ben and Jill help get the children out but on the top floor some children are still trapped.  Joe climbs a tree outside the orphanage in time to grasp a tiny child from the orphanages ledge to save her.  As he climbs down the tree, the flames have spread and now his only avenue to safety is cut off.  He begins to climb once again as the flames reach higher and higher.  The fire weakens the tree as it falls sending joe and the young girl crashing to the ground.  At the last moment Joe Jumps from the falling tree, saving the little child's life.  As the child gets up to walk away, the building behind them begins to collapse and Joe throws himself over the girl to protect her from the flaming debris.

Joe is a hero and is allowed to return to his African home where Ben and Jill live with him...happily ever after.

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