In a changing world where television has become the main source of information, Adam Caulfield, a young sports journalist, witnesses how his uncle, Frank Skeffington, a veteran and honest politician, mayor of a New England town, tries to be reelected while bankers and captains of industry conspire in the shadows to place a weak and manageable candidate in the city hall.

In 1904, Doc Tilbee, medicine show huckster and champion tall-tale teller, gives a ride to a young boy escaped from an orphanage, where bad conditions (the result of political graft) are being investigated by new appointee Zerelda Wing, who doesn't know that her fiancée is one of the politicians responsible. Tad wants to stay with his new friend Doc, who is attracted to Zerelda, to the discomfiture of his old flame Clara...all amid nostalgic musical numbers.

When his son accidentally kills someone, a lawyer must defend the man wrongly charged with the murder.

A series of reversals bring two desperate people together. When a saloon owner is framed by his partner for a stagecoach robbery, he fights to secure an acquittal.

In New York, Sheila Bennet and her spouse, Matt Krane, are trying to unload a trove of rare jewels they smuggled into America from Cuba, but the police are hot on the couple's trail. Meanwhile, government officials begin a desperate search for an unknown individual who is infecting the city with smallpox.

Ralph Cotter, a ruthless criminal, escapes violently from a farm prison. Then, he seduces a dead inmate’s sister, gets back quickly into the crime business, faces corrupt local cops who run the city’s underworld and meets a powerful tycoon’s whimsical daughter.

Pinky, a light skinned black woman, returns to her grandmother's house in the South after graduating from a Northern nursing school. Pinky tells her grandmother that she has been "passing" for white while at school in the North. In addition, she has fallen in love with a young white doctor, who knows nothing about her black heritage.

A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.

A prim psychology professor fights to hide a murder she committed in self-defense.

In 1932, a cop is killed and Frank Wiecek sentenced to life. Eleven years later, a newspaper ad by Frank's mother leads Chicago reporter P.J. O'Neal to look into the case. For some time, O'Neal continues to believe Frank guilty. But when he starts to change his mind, he meets increased resistance from authorities unwilling to be proved wrong.

Soon after a Chinese princess comes to the US to buy planes for her people, she is murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle.

Soon after a Chinese princess comes to the US to buy planes for her people, she is murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle.

The Highlanders and Lowlanders are sworn enemies until Lieutenant Kemper, the son of Brigadier Kemper, the leader of the militaristic Lowlanders, is held hostage by the Highlanders until his father's army has retreated to its own boundaries. Much to his surprise, the lieutenant is treated with kindness and consideration by his captors, especially by Boyadi and his beautiful daughter Nathalia, whom he learns to love. Thus, instead of obeying his father's command to escape at an appointed time when the Lowlanders plan to violate their pledge and storm the fortress, he keeps his promise to his captors and remains a prisoner.