An annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is better known by its nickname Oscar.

"Bilge" Smith (Richard Barthelmess), a tough sailor, meets Connie Martin (Dorothy Mackaill), a seamstress in a small harbor who has never had a boyfriend. Connie is instantly smitten. She invites Smith to dinner, where he dances with her and gives her a kiss. Connie has a hard time letting him go, and makes him promise that he will come back.

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.

When honest ship captain Roy Glennister gets swindled out of his mine claim, he turns to saloon singer Cherry Malotte for assistance in his battle with no-good town kingpin Alexander McNamara.

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

Standish, a wealthy Northerner, deserts his untutored Southern wife shortly after their daughter Primrose's birth, preferring to wed the cultured but haughty Emily. After her mother's death, Primrose is placed in the care of her uncle, who rears her as a refined and educated young lady. Longing for his daughter, Standish sends for her, and although Primrose, deeply resentful of her father, exaggerates the role of the uncouth mountain girl, he and his ward, Jack Wilton, come to love her deeply.

World War I veteran Tom Holmes is marked by the unbearable suffering caused by his battle wounds. Over the years, he comes to experience both the pain of misfortune and a love for other human beings.

Famous actress Norma Shearer's jewels are stolen… (Star-packed promotional short film intended to raise funds for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanatorium.)

Boy Leyton is second mate on board the Lady Spray, the ship on which his father is Captain Leyton. Boy is often chided by his father for his effeminacy and more often beaten. While in port Boy proposes to Minnie and suggests that she go to Glasgow to meet him there to be married. The ship sails and the Captain learns of his son's intention to marry. He calls him in and tells him about his mother, who deserted him, and tries to turn him away from all women, but Boy refuses to listen. The Captain is suddenly taken ill, but before he dies he makes Boy promise that he will not marry until he has found the man who wronged his mother. The Captain is buried at sea and the ship continues on its course. Upon reaching Glasgow Boy tells Minnie what happened. While at the bar, he meets an old woman who comes in begging. During the conversation he discovers that she is his mother, and he forces her to tell him who her betrayer was. A lost film.

Eric Fane (Richard Barthelmess) is a composer unwilling to compromise his dream for a steady job back home in the United States. After his studies in Italy, he moves to Paris, where he is forced to write popular songs for money when he stops receiving support from his father. He tires of selling out and, after an encounter with the mob, starts to travel. He begins a madcap journey from Paris to Port Said, Egypt, and to the South Seas, where he believes he has found love with Teita (Bessie Love).

A prince comes to America and falls in love with a regular girl.

Two men who bear a striking resemblance to each befriend each other while stationed in France during WWI. One is fatally fatally wounded and requests makes a dying request to his doppelganger to take on his identity.

World War I ace Dick Courtney derides the leadership of his superior officer, but he soon is promoted to squadron commander and learns harsh lessons about sending subordinates to their deaths.

Nance Molloy's cheerful disposition, in sharp contrast to the slum near the cathedral where she and her parents make their home, earns her the nickname "Sunshine Nan." However, her fights with the cathedral choirboys, led by MacPherson Clark, gets her into trouble. For interfering in a family squabble, she and her pal, Dan Lewis, are sent to reform school for five years, and upon her release, she becomes a stenographer in the elder Clark's shoe factory. Dan meanwhile has taken a job in the factory's chemical department, where he invents a dye process that promises to make him rich.

A young husband is left at home looking after a new baby when his wife leaves him to return to her career as a dancer.

Aviator Jim Blaine and his brother Neil are rivals not only as daredevil flyers, but also for the love of parachutist Jill Collins.

Beam opens a boarding house and many interesting characters are introduced. She spreads her optimism to their lives. Also to her blind father by telling him army stories about her brother when in actuality, he's deserted.