Susan is about to be married, but the wedding may get called off after her fiancé summons three former beaus. Each reveals a different portrait of Susan: one describes her as a naive country girl who reluctantly becomes an actress, another paints a picture of a gay party girl and and the third describes a serious intellectual.

In 1903, Doctor Huntington Bailey meets a friendly older lady during a train trip. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. Once in New York, Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died. Shortly afterward, he meets the strange couple and gets suspicious of Nick's treatment of his wife.

When the bride's mother is supposedly swindled out of her money by a spurned suitor, the groom's father orchestrates a scheme of his own to set things right. He is aided by a cabaret singer, while placating a jealous wife.

A 4F military school teacher's lie about being accepted for active duty causes problems on the home front.

Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.

The Army takes a bandleader (Kay Kyser) away from his bride (Ellen Drew) and sends him on a spy mission with a woman (Jane Wyman).

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Millionaire sportsman Hiram Brighton hires gumshoe Michael Shayne to keep his spoiled daughter Phyllis away from racetrack betting windows and roulette wheels. After Phyllis slips away and continues her compulsive gambling, Shayne fakes the murder of her gambler boyfriend, who is also romancing the daughter of casino owner Benny Gordon, in order to frighten her. When the tout really ends up murdered, Shayne and Phyllis' Aunt Olivia, an avid reader of murder mysteries, both try to find the identity of the killer.

Wall Street broker Robert Cain, Sr., is jailed for embezzling. His college graduate son Bob then turns to crime to raise money for his father's release. As assistant to mobster Mickey Dwyer, then falls for Dwyer's girl Lucky. He winds up in the same prison as his father.

After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.

Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed to the United States Senate by the puppet governor of his state. He soon discovers, upon going to Washington, many shortcomings of the political process as his earnest goal of a national boys' camp leads to a conflict with the state political boss.

A maker of illusions for magicians protects an ingenue likely to be murdered.

A French playboy and an American former nightclub singer fall in love aboard a ship. They arrange to reunite six months later, if neither has changed their mind.

A disruptive Annapolis naval cadet refuses to tow the line and so gets booted out of the prestigious academy. Later, he takes to designing speedboats. They are innovative and soon the Navy comes a-knocking in hopes that he will design a fast and easily maneuverable boat to carry torpedoes.

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

An auto engineer and a professor's daughter pose as married servants in a mobster's mansion.

Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton...

The Progressive Party convention is deadlocked for governor, so both sides nominate the dark horse Zachary Hicks. Kay Russell suggests they hire Hal Blake as campaign manager; but first they have to get him out of jail for not paying alimony. Blake organizes the office and coaches Hicks to answer every question by pausing and then saying, "Well yes, but then again no." Blake will sell Hicks as dumb but honest. Russell refuses to marry Blake, while Joe keeps people away from Blake's office. Blake teaches Hicks a speech by Lincoln. At the debate when the conservative candidate Underwood recites the same speech, Blake exposes him as a plagiarist. Hicks is presented for photo opportunities and gives his yes-and-no answer to any question, including whether he expects to win.

Lee is a fresh young kid from the South when he gets a job with The Press. His first assignment on gangsters gets his name in the paper, the police on a raid and Lee in the hospital.