Bootlegger/cafe owner, Johnny Franks recruits crude working man Scorpio to join his gang, masterminded by crooked criminal defense lawyer Newton. Scorpio eventually takes over Frank's operation, beats a rival gang, becomes wealthy, and dominates the city for several years until a secret group of six masked businessmen have him prosecuted and sent to the electric chair.
An American bandleader woos a Brazilian beauty who is already engaged to his employer. His friends try to help him, while learning the local dance, The Carioca. The first pairing of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, and their only pre-Code film.
An on-the-lam New York card shark marries a small-town librarian who thinks he's a businessman.
A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.
A trio of money-hungry women rent a luxurious penthouse, spending their dough on drink and debonair clothing, backbiting and catfighting as they steal each other's boyfriends.
Sensational movie star Mavis Arden's following spans the world and her personal appearance tours prove her popularity. On her way home from one such appearance, Mavis' car breaks down. She orders her publicity agent to find her a place to stay, suspicious that he planned the breakdown to keep her away from a man. However, she soon finds herself mooning over an attractive local repairman and listening to his ideas about inventing equipment for film.
The Wiggs family plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in their rundown shack with leftover stew, without Mr. Wiggs who wandered off long ago an has never been heard from. Do-gooder Miss Lucy brings them a real feast. Her boyfriend Bob arranges to take Wiggs' sick boy to a hospital. Their other boy makes some money peddling kindling and takes the family to a show. Mrs. Wiggs is called to the hopsital just in time to see her boy die. Her neighbor Miss Mazy wants to marry Mr. Stubbins who insists on tasting her cooking. Mrs. Wiggs sneaks her dishes past Stubbins who agrees to marriage. Mr. Wiggs appears suddenly, in tatters, with just the amount of money (twenty dollars) needed to save the family from foreclosure. Miss Lucy and Bob get married.
The son of a ruthless meatpacking king goes through a number of changes in ideals and motivations as he reluctantly inherits the mantle and falls in love.
A wealthy couple's marriage is falling apart due to the man's infidelity. The wife's male friend has long loved her and sees his big opportunity.
A young man drowns his sorrows in strong drink when jilted by his girl. His drunkenness gets him thrown in jail, where he falls in love with the jailer's daughter. When released, the young man tries everything to get back into the jail - though when he is mistaken for an anarchist bomber, he finds himself facing not just jail, but execution.
A prosecutor quits his job and becomes a defense attorney when he finds out that a man he got convicted and executed was actually innocent.
Bob Brown uses his bedside manner to charm his patients while his partner makes the actual diagnoses.
A day in the maternity ward from the lens of accepted morals and medical attitudes of 1932. The ward includes women from all walks of life and situations.
A hustling public relations man promotes a series of fads.
Ace reporter Curt Devlin and fellow reporter Ellen Garfield love one another, but Curt believes women are "bum newspapermen". When a murder investigation ensues, the two compete every step of the way, determined to not be scooped by the other.
The various residents and occupants of a resort hotel await the outcome of a horse race at a nearby track, as it will affect each of their lives in different ways.
A socialite finds herself involved in a murder trial that is prosecuted by her boyfriend.
Lifelong friends and medical school graduates Mary Stevens and Don Andrews decide to set up office together. While Mary struggles to earn respect because of her gender, Don gets caught up in his ambitions for a bigger life.
Mary wants to marry a gangster because that is where the money is. Unfortunately, the life expectancy and finances of a gangster are unstable.
A bitter woman who thinks she'll never love again marries, only to fall for a brash young man.
A newlywed couple journeys west to make their fortune, and begins a banking empire.
Wall Street wizard, Larry Day, new to the ways of love, is coached by his valet. He follows Vivian Benton on an ocean liner, where cocktails, laced with a "love potion," work their magic. He then loses his fortune in the market crash and feels he has also lost his girl.
While Peggy deeply falls in love with Jimmy, her best friend Millie becomes increasingly frustrated with men and very jealous with Peggy, so she tries everything to destroy the new love.
Wallingford is a con-man whose specialty is taking money from suckers. His partners are Schnozzle, a pickpocket and car thief; and Blackie, who has played the game for years.
Two men bear the name Joe Holt. One is a shipping clerk, the other a champion Canadian swimmer. When a socialite gets them confused, thinking the clerk is the inventor of an unsinkable swim suit, she enters him in a 20 mile swim race.
Mary Smith decides after a lifetime of being a shut-in to do something wild while her father is out campaigning for the presidency, so she takes off for the family's home in West Palm Beach and inadvertently becomes romantically entangled with earnest cowboy Stretch Willoughby. Neither the dalliance nor the cowboy fit with the upper class image projected by her esteemed father, forcing her to choose.
Bold performer Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent financial need, she agrees to a risky new number: she'll put her head into the lion's mouth! With this attraction, the circus makes it to New York and Tira can pursue her dearest occupation — flirting with rich men and accepting expensive presents.
A young woman runs away from an abusive home and pre-arranged marriage only to be frustrated in her attempts to find happiness with a handsome engineer.
When a woman models for an artist they fall in love. Can the artist overcome the beauty's recent past as another man's mistress?
A beautiful chorine marries a handsome rich socialite, but her idyllic life ends when she visits a dying old beau and is charged when he commits suicide.
A newsman with a no-good wife exposes a religious racket with a newswoman who loves him.
Chadburne Steel is run by two brothers, old men. They each have different plans for their sons. Curtis (Holmes Herbert) has put Ronald (William Blakewell) through college in style...
Socialite Letty Lynton is returning to New York, abandoning one-time lover Emile Renaul in South America, when she strikes up a shipboard romance with Jerry Darrow. Renault is waiting for her in New York and will not leave her alone, so she poisons him. When detectives take her to the D.A.'s office, Jerry cooks up an alibi.
Casino operator Johnny Lamb hires down-on-her-luck socialite Lucille Sutton as his casino hostess, in order to help her and to improve casino income. But Lamb's pals fear he may follow Lucille onto the straight-and-narrow path, which would not be good for business. So they hire Gert Malloy and Dictionary McKinney, a pair of con-artists, to manipulate Johnny back off the path of righteousness.
Foxhall Ridgeway, arriving in New York City from the West, stumbles onto a murder in the hotel room next to his. He gets tangled up into the affair, and with the aid of Phoebe, the hotel telephone operator who takes a liking to him, and also Countess Louise Browssiloff, who innocently had left some personal belongings in the murdered man's room and is most anxious to recover the incriminating evidence, Foxhall solves the murder mystery.
When a young man marries a Russian girl, he finds that he has "married" her entire family.
Generational saga about a failed streetcar conductor, who finds success as an Atlantic City fortune teller, and his son.
John Thompson is kidnapped by mobsters after quitting his job. Then he is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for murders they committed. A suspicious detective thinks he is innocent and works to save his life.
A murder happens when greedy relatives gather to await the demise of their wealthy and very ill family patriarch.
A woman struggles to rekindle the affection of her husband.
Innocent Nancy Carroll falls in love with con man Edmund Lowe and the pair swindle their way across the country until they decide to settle down in a small town and give up their life of crime. He goes into business and all seems to be going well until some ex-partners he double crossed show up in town demanding the money he cheated them out of.
Socially-conscious banker Thomas Dickson faces a crisis when his protégé is wrongly accused of robbing the bank, gossip of the robbery starts a bank run, and evidence suggests Dickson's wife had an affair... all in the same day.
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.
After decades of raising the motherless Smith children, housekeeper Emma Thatcher is faced with resentment when she marries their father.
Don Bellows finds former stage star Joyce Heath a penniless drunk and takes her to his Connecticut home for rehabilitation. He asks his fiancée Gail to free him and offers to sponsor Joyce in a play.
Divorcee Laura marries Paul but his employer is also enamored with Laura and sends Paul on a business trip during which a murder is committed and he is accused of the crime.
Madcap couple George and Marion Kerby are killed in an automobile accident. They return as ghosts to try and liven up the regimented lifestyle of their friend and bank president, Cosmo Topper. When Topper starts to live it up, it strains relations with his stuffy wife.
Middle aged George F. Babbitt is a leading citizen in the town of Zenith, the fastest growing community in America according to its town sign. George is a large part of that growth as a property developer and realtor. He is lovingly married to his wife Myra, the two who have two children, Ted and Verona who are approaching adulthood. George has always had a fearless attitude, much like that of a naive child, which has led to his business success. He encounters some personal stresses when he faces what he believes is a potential home-wrecking issue, and when his oldest friend Paul and his wife Zilla deal with domestic problems. These stresses make George want to provide even more to his own family, leading to George agreeing to participate in a less than scrupulous but lucrative business dealing. George's bravura gets him into a potential scandal. This situation makes him question his general behavior, especially toward his family.
After greedy men have Edmound Dantes unjustly imprisoned for 20 years for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him, he escapes to revenge himself on them.
International con artist Martha Hicks a.k.a. Countess von Claudwig is released from another stay in prison and decides to treat her rheumatism with a stay at her estranged husband's hotel at a Wisconsin spa. There undercover, she checks in on the two daughters she abandoned as infants.
John Paul Bart is just a pants-presser in a tailor's shop, but he has big ambitions. One night, he borrows the clothes of a wealthy client and bluffs his way into a high society party. After meeting wealthy businessman Abraham Nathan, John Paul quickly rises to the top of Nathan's company. Suffering during The Depression, John Paul helps Nathan save his company with a radical program of cooperative ownership between workers and management. Meanwhile, John Paul makes an enemy of Gustav, who is engaged to Tanya - the daughter of Mr. Huber, owner of the tailor shop. John Paul maintains a friendship with Tanya, provoking jealousy in Gustav. Gustav threatens to reveal John Paul's plain origins to Nathan, and John Paul briefly resigns from Nathan's company. However, John Paul's plan is a success, and Nathan hires him back immediately. Tanya leaves Gustav and ends up with John Paul.
A young wife wants to have children, but her husband neglects her. She confides her longings to a handsome brain surgeon. Complications ensue.
Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer, can make her dreams come true, but, there is only one problem; he will give her everything except a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?
Mary Turner gets a three year prison sentence for a crime she didn't commit. Once released, she plots to get back at the man responsible for her conviction.
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man's world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.
This historical featurette focuses on Caesar Rodney of Delaware who in the summer of 1776 cast the deciding vote, at the meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, so that the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
A scorned woman dreams of revenge on the man who betrayed her.
Longtime friends become feuding mothers-in-law when their children marry.
A young man goes up against a crooked town boss.
The wealthy Van Dyke family are constantly in the media for outrageous behavior, much to the frustration of the patriarch, Dan Van Dyke. His self-centered wife has a fondness for foreign imports, including "pet projects" like dancers and such and his spoiled children Tony and Carol have constant run-ins with the law. When Dan himself ends up in the clink for five years for tax evasion, he becomes bunk-mates with ex-bootlegger Joe "Spots" Ricardi. Ricardi lectures him on being such a push-over for an out-of-control family, so a dying Dan makes Ricardi his estate trustee once he is released from prison. Ricardi is then thrust into high society and must do everything he once nagged Dan to do.
An ex-convict working for a wealthy oil baron uncovers trouble while his brother becomes involved with the boss's daughter.
A book publisher finds his business floundering, which prompts his socially ambitious wife to desert him for a society millionaire, leaving him with their young son. The publisher's fortunes improve dramatically, however, when a best-selling romance novelist decides to publish her new book with his firm. In the meantime, his ex-wife has married the millionaire, and she and her new mother-in-law come up with a plan to sue her ex-husband for custody of the boy.
The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the rival countries. The opulent Marie indulges in various whims and flirtations. When Louis XV passes and Louis XVI ascends the French throne, his queen's extravagant lifestyle earns the hatred of the French people, who despise her Austrian heritage.
John Power is a hard-nosed financier who has neglected his domestic life and who tries to ruin the Wray family. But a revelation concerning a Wray family member sends Power into a climactic delirium in which he believes he is being judged by people in his life.
A maid has romances with a two-timer, a boozing millionaire and the master of the house.
Adventuress Leonie Sobatsky falls in love with a young man named Nevil Trask, and he with her. Trask doesn't know that Leonie is actually the head of an international smuggling ring--and Leonie doesn't know that Trask is an undercover Secret Service agent assigned to break up the ring and capture its head.
An elderly businessman thinking about aging and death takes time off to help teach a dead friend's children about life and business.
An aspiring writer and her boyfriend, a professional agitator head off to the Big Apple in search of good fortune. Unfortunately, the agitator soon finds himself in trouble with the cops. Meanwhile the writer attempts to become a Greenwich Village Bohemian type. She and her new friends are all starving for their art until a kindly gent offers them financial assistant. They refuse on principle. Tragedy pays a call when the writer learns that her boyfriend has been untrue.
Generational saga tracing the events in the lives of the midwest pioneering Nordholm family, as seen through the eyes of businessman Orin Nordholm Jr., who ages from a youth to an elderly grandfather.
Steve Perkins decides to borrow Winnie, the newly acquired wife of his roommate Percival, in order to meet his Aunt Sarah's wishes and receive his inheritance sooner. The aunt is so impressed with Winifred that she leaves the money in the name of the framed-up wife. Aunty, however, runs into Winifred and her real husband Percy together and becomes suspicious.