Elwood P. Dowd is a goodnatured, mild-mannered eccentric who is known in all of the cafeterias and saloons in his small town. Elwood is polite and cheerful and always friendly toward any strangers he might encounter, and he has just one problematic character trait: his best friend is an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit, Harvey. Wherever he goes, he brings an extra hat and coat for Harvey, and he buys theater tickets and railroad tickets in twos so that they can go everywhere together. His sister and her daughter try to have Elwood committed to the local sanitarium, where the behavior of the prominent psychologist and his staff raise the ageold question of who is more dangerous to society: the easy-going dreamer with a vivid imagination or the people who want him to conform to the accepted version of reality.