A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
Mahyna, a dissatisfied Russian peasant girl, marries Boris and comes to New York in search of "the soul of love," only to become a drudge in their cheap flat. Meanwhile, Boris, a bookshop keeper, dreams of a prosperous future from the book he is writing. Their boarder, Dave, a partner in a gambling establishment, makes a play for Mahyna; she is tempted to leave with him when Eddie, a former admirer, arrives on the scene, and the two get into constant arguments over her.
The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a majority as the first ballot closes and the front-runners begin to decide how badly they want the job.
A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.
Los Angeles newspaper reporter Toby Prentiss is continually in trouble with his editor. He is demoted to running the paper's "Miss Lonelyhearts" advice column because he missed the scoop on a major earthquake whilst out on the town. Determined to be fired from the column he starts to give crazy advice to the readers, but this only makes him even more popular.
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
A carnival showman tries to keep Japanese spies from sabotaging the Panama Canal.
A car accident traps two men inside a car near the water. With the tide coming in, they discuss the circumstances that led up to the accident.
An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.
A gossip columnist helps a Broadway ingenue who's beholden to a penthouse gangster.
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.
A carnival pitchman (Tracy) finagles his girlfriend, a fiery hoochie dancer (Vélez), into a major Broadway revue under the auspices of an impresario (Morgan).
The city's District Attorney is murdered, and a newspaper reporter investigates. He starts finding out that everything wasn't quite as cut and dried as it appeared to be.
While recuperating in a hospital after he's hit by an automobile, a struggling shopowner dreams what his life might have been like if he'd made different choices twenty years earlier.
A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
A comedy-romance about rival brothers attending a military academy.
Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a conniving ambulance chaser who falls in love with Evans, unaware she's a special investigator for a streetcar company he's repeatedly victimized.
Actor Lee Tracy presides as ringmaster over a show that combines the best elements of cinema with the circus, what he calls a Cinema Circus. Tracy introduces a number of professional circus acts, plus a cavalcade of movie stars who have side shows under the open air big tent. There is as much action in the audience as Tracy identifies a number of movie stars watching the proceedings incognito, having their own fun in the stands, and sometimes interacting with the circus acts.
A fast-talking reporter befriends a young woman and her male companion who are wanted for a policeman's shooting.
Charlie Dugan is a quick-thinking boss of a traveling circus playing small towns in Missouri and Kansas.
A true-to-life gangster movie stirs up an all out mob assault on Hollywood.
Buckley is an unethical reporter who manipulates the news for his own benefit as much as he reports it. When he is in Paris to get a medal for being rescued from his alleged kidnappers, he finds that his boss, Stevens, at the Chicago Globe is going with his old gal Dolly. When Stevens learns that Dolly is staying with Buckley in Moscow, he fires Buckley. To get his job back, Buckley and Lefty stage a great news story about the shooting of the last Romanoff, but the plan backfires and they are now in line to be shot by the Commissar.
A fast-talking boxing manager and the somewhat hapless fighter he manages happen to run into a young man who was a good prizefighter in his day but is now out of the sport and has a drinking problem. They decide to train him for a big match, and in the process find themselves involved in romance, shady characters and a possible kidnapping.
A radio reporter sets out to rescue his ex-girlfriend when she is kidnapped by gangsters.
When vaudeville performer Florette Faxon is left penniless with her six-year-old son Jimmy, she relies on the friendship of fellow performer Bud Hannigan to help her get a job. Bud is reluctant to become her partner, as he has proven to himself to be unreliable in relationships, but he tells her to call him whenever she needs help. While working in a beer garden, Florette meets Hap Stanley, an avaricious performer who marries her to get the rights to perform her show routine. Hap dislikes Jimmy and eventually convinces Florette to send him away to school. Both Jimmy and Florette are broken-up over being apart, but Jimmy pretends it is what he wants so Florette can be happy with Hap.
Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
Opportunistic film seeking to capitalize on a scandal in New York mayor Jimmy Walker's office before his name was out of the newspapers. Tracy plays a mayor who has a penchant for the night life, sports, the theater, and an actress, Knapp. When scandal rocks his administration, Tracy has his girl friend marry Dillaway, a writer friend, so that the press will leave him alone.
Story of the gold strike on an immigrant's property that started the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Investigators set out to capture a gang of thieves transporting stolen cash through the U.S. mail.
Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton...
In order to use the publicity to get re-elected, a judge sentences a notorious gangster to fight in the war.
Jed Marlowe is a brilliant, scheming, unscrupulous criminal lawyer whose specialty is defending criminal he knows is guilty but gets them off through loop-holes or bribery. Then his daughter, misled by her father’s courtroom performance, but unaware of his back-room tactics, marries the killer her father has just unjustly save from the electric chair. What’s a poor father to do?
A crop of millionaire inmates struggle to get accustomed to prison life, while inmate Nick Burton watches out for everyone's interests on the inside.
Lee Tracy once again plays a Winchellesque newspaper reporter in Universal's I'll Tell the World. More interested in his sex life than his career, news hawk Brown nonetheless agrees to cover the activities of a European archduke on behalf of his wire service.
A PR man saves a struggling radio station from ruin.
"Chick" Thompson is a puppet-master in a traveling carnival whose wife dies in childbirth and leaves him with an infant son he names "Poochy." His father-in-law and the baby's grandfather sues him for custody of the baby and Chick takes his son and hides out for a couple of years. He joins his former assistants, Daisy and "Fingers", in a circus act only to find that the persistent grandfather is still on his trail.
Various Hollywood performers put on a pirate-themed variety show on Catalina Island, with a number of amiable stars in the audience.
The Lemon Drop Kid is a fast-talking racetrack bum who swindles $100 from an old, ailing man. He takes it on the lam with his sidekick, The Professor.
After America enters World War I, young William "Bill" Jones tries to avoid military service by telling the draft board that he is the sole supporter of his family and is employed by businessman Roger Winthrop, his sister Helen's boss.
Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
The relationship between a male dancer and his actress girlfriend is threatened by a scheming chorister.