Three years into their loving marriage, with two infant daughters at home in Los Angeles, Nicholas Arden and Ellen Wagstaff Arden are on a plane that goes down in the South Pacific. Although most passengers manage to survive the incident, Ellen presumably perishes when swept off her lifeboat, her body never recovered. Fast forward five years. Nicholas, wanting to move on with his life, has Ellen declared legally dead. Part of that moving on includes getting remarried, this time to a young woman named Bianca Steele, who, for their honeymoon, he plans to take to the same Monterrey resort where he and Ellen spent their honeymoon. On that very same day, Ellen is dropped off in Los Angeles by the Navy, who rescued her from the South Pacific island where she was stranded for the past five years. She asks the Navy not to publicize her rescue nor notify Nicholas as she wants to do so herself.

After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.

An Italian socialite on the run signs on as housekeeper for a widower with three children.

An Italian socialite on the run signs on as housekeeper for a widower with three children.

Prohibition-era nightclub crooner Joe E. Lewis has his career and nearly his life cut short when his throat is slashed as payback for leaving the employ of Chicago mob boss Georgie Parker. A broken alcoholic, Joe is brought back from the abyss by his faithful piano player, Austin Mack, who helps turn the former singer into a successful stand-up comedian. But Joe's demons plague his romantic life even as he reaches new heights of success.

Cuban Bandleader Ricky Ricardo would be happy if his wife Lucy would just be a housewife. Instead she tries constantly to perform at the Tropicana where he works, and make life comically frantic in the apartment building they share with landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz, who also happen to be their best friends.

The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the CBS Sunday Night Movie, which ran only one season and was eventually replaced by other shows. In 2002, The Ed Sullivan Show was ranked #15 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

A socialite joins the Womens Ambulance Corps as both a publicity stunt and to win a bet with a newspaper columnist, who wagered $5000 that she couldn't last six weeks.

The struggle of a man to build a steam ship to take him across the Atlantic in spite of all setbacks, and his win against a crack sailing boat in the early 19th century.