Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

A rapid series of murders occurs when a professor disrupts a tranquil Egyptian tomb by removing some precious jewels.

In a typical traveling circus, all the workers have problems over their heads; A puppeteer named Magnus controls his troupe like marionettes until a good clown arrives on the scene to help relieve them of their burdens.