The trustees of Midwestern University have forced three teachers out of their jobs for being suspected communists. Trustee Ed Keller has also threatened mild mannered English Professor Tommy Turner, because he plans to read a controversial piece of prose in class. Tommy is upset that his wife Ellen also suggested he not read the passage. Meanwhile, Ellen's old boyfriend, the football player Joe Ferguson, comes to visit for the homecoming weekend. He takes Ellen out dancing after the football rally, causing Tommy to worry that he will lose her to Joe.
Struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll meets Sally while on holiday in the country. A romance develops, but he doesn't tell her he's already married. Suffering from mental illness, Geoffrey returns home where he paints an impression of his wife as the angel of death and then promptly poisons her. He marries Sally but after a while he finds a strange urge to paint her as the angel of death too and history seems about to repeat itself.
A beautiful but unscrupulous female performer manipulates all the men in her life in order to achieve her aims.
British estate agent Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a castle in London. After Dracula enslaves Renfield and drives him to insanity, the pair sail to London together and Dracula, a secret vampire, begins preying on London socialites.
A jewel thief and a con artist are rivals in the theft of a valuable diamond and gem necklace in Bombay and as the Japanese Army invades China.
A former reporter comes back home after serving in the army during World War I and finds that it's much more difficult to find work than he expected. Desperate, one day he crashes a wedding attended by many of the city's rich and powerful, meets a beautiful girl named Kay who turns out to be his ticket to meeting those rich and powerful people, and he soon manages to land a job on a newspaper. He gets caught up in the "make money at all costs" game but receives a rude awakening when the stock market crashes in 1929.
Fight promoter Nick Donati grooms a bellhop as a future champ, but has second thoughts when the 'kid' falls for his sister.
Stigmatized from infancy by the fate of his criminal father, a man is bruised and bullied until one night, in a fit of rage, he kills his most persistent tormentor. As the police close in around him, he makes a desperate bid for the love of the dead man’s fiancée, a schoolteacher who sees the wounded soul behind his aggression.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Showman Jerry Travers is working for producer Horace Hardwick in London. Jerry demonstrates his new dance steps late one night in Horace's hotel room, much to the annoyance of sleeping Dale Tremont below. She goes upstairs to complain and the two are immediately attracted to each other. Complications arise when Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace.
Mabel plays an out-and-out crook, a "Girl Bandit," no less. And she quickly hooks up with a male partner in crime, in this case a Gentleman Crook played by perpetually grinning Creighton Hale. Mabel seems a little livelier in this film than in some of her other late works. In the very first scene we find her hitch-hiking, and she's forced to make a mad dash for cover when Hale's car nearly hits her. Soon they team up and crash a swanky party in a mansion to steal a jewel from the host's safe.
A runaway heiress makes a deal with the rogue reporter trailing her but the mismatched pair end up stuck with each other when their bus leaves them behind.
Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane flees across the United States after he is wrongly accused of starting the fire that killed his best friend.
Unexpected love blossoms when an assistant district attorney agrees to take a recidivist shoplifter home so she doesn't have to spend Christmas alone in jail.
Comic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voyage, turns up very much alive.
The lives of two cousins are complicated by the return of an ex-boyfriend and an illegitimate child.
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 young pacifist after refusing on principle to defend her sweetheart's honor and being banished in disgrace, joins a riverboat troupe as a singer, acquires a reputation as a crackshot after a saloon brawl in which the villain of the piece accidentally kills himself with his own gun, falls in love with his former fianceé's sister and finally bullies an apprehensive family into accepting him.
Secretary Marilyn David falls in love with British aristocrat Charles Gray, to the dismay of her best friend, reporter Peter Dawes, who secretly loves her. When Peter learns that the already-engaged Charles has hurt Marilyn, he fabricates an article casting her as the "No Girl" who refused to marry a callous aristocrat. But when the publicity brings Marilyn unexpected fame, and Charles returns, she is forced to choose between the two men.
Kelly's employer, Waters, is such a keen golfer that he asks Kelly to help him improve his game at an exclusive country club.
After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
Millionairess Dorothy Hunter is tired of finding out that her boyfriends love her for her money, and equally weary of losing eligible beaus who don't want to be considered fortune-hunters. That's why she trades identities with her secretary Sylvia before embarking on her next romance with Tony Travers. This causes numerous complications not only for Dorothy and Tony but for Sylvia, whose own husband Philip is not the most patient of men.