A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

A photographer takes up newsreel shooting to impress a secretary.

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.

Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.

Socialite Judith Traherne lives a lavish but emotionally empty life. Riding horses is one of her few joys, and her stable master is secretly in love with her. Told she has a brain tumor by her doctor, Frederick Steele, Judith becomes distraught. After she decides to have surgery to remove the tumor, Judith realizes she is in love with Dr. Steele, but more troubling medical news may sabotage her new relationship, and her second chance at life.

J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.

Hollywood hopeful Peggy Pepper arrives at a major studio, from Georgia, to become a great dramatic star. Things don't go entirely according to plan.

When retired racket boss John Sarto tries to reclaim his place and former friends try to kill him, he finds solace in a monastery and reinvents himself as a pious monk.

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

Linda, the wife of a publishing executive, suspects that her husband Van’s relationship with his attractive secretary Whitey is more than professional.

Eight people are invited by an unsigned telegram to a penthouse apartment, where they find themselves locked in and greeted by their unknown host's voice via the radio, who explains that before the night is over each one will be die unless they manage to outwit the ninth guest, Death.

A little girl goes in search of her father who is reported missing by the military during the Second Boer War.

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.

On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young businessman is about to commit suicide. With a note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices an envelope addressed to him on his desk. As he begins to read, we're taken back to World War One and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.

A wealthy society doctor decides to research the medical aspects of criminal behaviour by becoming one himself. He joins a gang of thieves and proceeds to wrest leadership of the gang away from its extremely resentful leader.

Ballet star Petrov arranges to cross the Atlantic aboard the same ship as the dancer and musical star he's fallen for but barely knows. By the time the ocean liner reaches New York, a little white lie has churned through the rumour mill and turned into a hot gossip item—that the two celebrities are secretly married.

A Butler gets elected to the Hungarian parliament where he opposes his master's government.