George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.

After the death of a United States Senator, the idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. The naive and earnest new senator soon finds himself battling political corruption.

Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony Kirby, but his wealthy banker father and snobbish mother strongly disapprove of the match. When the Kirbys are invited to dinner to become better acquainted with their future in-laws, things don't turn out the way Alice had hoped.

A traveling performer arrives at a remote South American port town where the head of an air freight service must risk his pilots' lives to earn a major contract.

After retiring from movies to get an education, a man discovers his ex-staff is trying to have him expelled.

An easy-going cowboy is mistaken by the townsfolk for a notorious gunman. The cowboy decides it would be best to leave town, until he meets the gunman's girlfriend.

It's World War II and there is a severe housing shortage everywhere - especially in Washington, D.C. where Connie Milligan rents an apartment. Believing it to be her patriotic duty, Connie offers to sublet half of her apartment, fully expecting a suitable female tenent. What she gets instead is mischievous, middle-aged Benjamin Dingle. Dingle talks her into subletting to him and then promptly sublets half of his half to young, irreverent Joe Carter - creating a situation tailor-made for comedy and romance.

A showgirl with a dubious reputation flees the cops and transforms herself into a phony evangelist offering "cures" to the sick and disabled.

Prizefighter Bob Neal (Ray Walker) is in debt to gangster Vic Santell (Hooper Atchley) for training expenses. Santell orders Bob to take a dive in the fourth round so Santell can recoup prior gambling losses. Taunted by his ring opponent, Bob wins the fight. Realizing that his profession and underworld characters connected to it are causing him problems, Bob decides to join the police force. After taking nurse Mary Prentiss (Geneva Mitchell) to a drive-in restaurant where the total bill is a depression-era cheap eighty-two cents, Bob and his fellow officers round-up a gang of fur thieves in a warehouse shoot-out.

A New York doctor saves a chorus girl from a window ledge, twice, and rounds up racketeers.

An auto engineer and a professor's daughter pose as married servants in a mobster's mansion.

The boys are stowaways on a train box-car filled with furniture bound for Hollywood where they hope to break into movies and become stars. Arriving at the Carnation Pictures Studios. Fuller Rath, the studio general manager, receives a telegram from the home office telling him that a certain "Mr. Smith and his two assistants" will arrive to take over the supervision of the studios. He mistakes the Stooges as the executives and gives them free reign over the studios, where they proceed to disrupt and destroy the production of a romantic drama.

Pickpocket Kitty's life changes when painter Thomas Gainsborough makes her portrait. The artwork gains the attention of Sir Hugh Marcy, who later decides to use her for his benefit.

An actor becomes a suspect in the murders of four New Yorkers injected with rattlesnake venom.

When Andrew Long, hyper-efficient small town accountant, finds a $1240 discrepancy in the city budget, his superiors try to explain it away. When he insists on pursuing the matter, he's in danger of being blamed himself. In his trouble, the spirit of Andrew Jackson, whom he idolizes, visits him, and in turn, summons much high-powered talent from American history...which only Andrew can see.

Theater manager James Guthrie's (Melvyn Douglas) career depends on famed soprano Elsa Terry (Grace Moore) singing in his Buenos Aires opera house, however, Elsa breaks the contract in favor of a more lucrative deal in Paris. Desperate, James begins showering her with flowers and candy in an attempt to woo her to the Argentinian opera house. When Elsa overhears James confess to his friend Pancho that he'd be willing to resort to kidnapping to get Elsa to Argentina, she mistakenly believes his motives to be solely romantic.

Spies force former jewel thief Michael Lanyard to steal defense secrets in Washington.

After a rare gem is stolen from an exhibition at a posh hotel, Inspector Farraday decides to recruit former thief Boston Blackie to find the stone. Along with his assistant, "The Runt", Blackie focuses his investigation on the hotel manager, George Daley, and his sister, Eileen. Through disguises and ruses, Blackie and the Runt try to trick their way to discovering the thieves.

The stooges escape from jail when they learn their father, who has just become rich, is planning to leave their mother and marry a young girl. Curly is mistaken for the stooges father (he plays both parts) and marries the girl instead. When they learn that she is working with gangsters who plan to kill their father for his money, they escape and take their father with them.