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The real-life story of Gypsy Rose Lee. Mama Rose is going to put her daughters on the stage. She enters them in a 'fixed' talent contest in Seattle and engages Herbie as manager of her troupe, called Baby June and her Newsboys, to work on the Orpheum Circuit. Rose dangles the prospect of marriage before Herbie as the years pass. Vaudeville is dying, and Baby June leaves the act to elope with her sweetheart (and a separate career as June Havoc on stage and screen).
Enter Madam Rose's Toreadorables led by the seemingly awkward and talentless elder daughter, Louise. Making Louise a star is a full-time job for Rose. They're booked into a low burlesque house, where strippers are the main item on the bill. When one of them gets arrested, Louise takes her place. Rose still won't marry Herbie, who leaves, finally. Meanwhile, Louise, as Gypsy Rose Lee, is a sensation. Her fame leads her to the top and Minsky's in New York. She's witty, elegant, self-confident - there's no longer an obvious place in Gypsy's life for the archetypal stage mother. Rose becomes increasingly annoyed by her daughter's intellectual pretensions. After a bitter quarrel, Rose shows what she could have done herself - imitating Louise's stripping in the tremendous 'Rose's Turn', the best 'eleven o'clock number' in Broadway history - and the two are reconciled.
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