In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
A Tennessee art school student wins a scholarship to paint in Paris. He is thrilled until he arrives and discovers that his style is hopelessly passe and is considered trashy. The enterprising artist immediately changes style and begins painting highly-abstract moderns.
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.
In New York, a gambler is challenged to take a cold female missionary to Havana, but they fall for each other, and the bet has a hidden motive to finance a crap game.
Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
Fly-by-night stage producer Bob Grant inadvertently saves the life of small-towner Thomas Maxwell. The grateful Maxwell invites Grant to move in with his family, which he does, rapidly wearing out his welcome. Finally booted out of the Maxwell household, Grant takes Tom's homely but sweet-voiced daughter Dora with him, giving her a cosmetic makeover and turning her into a big star -- and thereby repaying his host's kindness in a most roundabout fashion.
A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show, and at the last moment a chorus girl has to replace the star.
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
Grace Livingston is leading a happy life in her small town, with her mother and father, being courted by two men, the steady but predictable Tommy Tucker and the more ambitious, flashy, and worldly Dick Loring, who seems closer to Grace in his desire for travel and adventure.
A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
New York City tenement dwelling neighbors Blondie and Lottie are longtime best friends. When Lottie makes the cast of the Follies and moves up in the world, she arranges for Blondie, as well, to join the cast and gain the advantages. But the friendship goes awry when Lottie's sweetheart, wealthy Larry Belmont, falls for Blondie and she for him.
At a big party, Roger Fallon, now a woman-hater, right to the core - this all due to a failed marriage and disastrous love affairs - talks to Herbert Drake. Herbert who is happily married, bets Fallon that the next woman who walks into the room, whoever she is, won't let Fallon kiss her for 48 hours. Fallon takes the bet. Suddenly, a very beautiful and sexy woman walks in. It's Herbert's wife, Jeanne Drake...
A salesman gets in trouble with a party girl and a debutante in Detroit.
New York girl has a dull boyfriend and seems destined for a dull marriage when she meets a rich playboy who has money to burn and places to go.
Extra-marital fun and games at a convention of the Honeywell Rubber Company in Atlantic City. President J.B. Honeywell is to choose a new company sales manager. T.R. Kent and George Ellerbe are two salesmen who both want the job. However, they both get into trouble: T.R. is discredited when jealous saleswoman, Arlene Dale, interferes with his attempted seduction of Honeywell's daughter, Claire, and George attempts to seduce Nancy Lorraine. The position of sales manager is bestowed upon a drunken employee as a bribe after he catches J.B. about to visit "Daisy La Rue, Exterminator." Considered a lost film.
Foreign investors converge on a luxury hotel in China to bid on a new kind of radioscope. But, this is a hotel where Burns and Allen are the in-house medical staff, a measles risk sends the whole building into quarantine, and a madcap millionaire crashes dinner in his autogyro. Hotel and radioscope become a stage for an all-star cast of comedians and musicians, from vaudeville to the new generation.
Troubles begin for the Sterlings when they buy an expensive car and friends start pressing them for rides.
When motorcycle cop Dick Fay gives a ticket to Phyllis Crawford, her father's graft-fed influence leads to his demotion to foot patrolman.
In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "friends" with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two.
At a Florida hotel, absconding miscreant J. Effingham Bellweather goes slapstick golfing with the house detective's flirtatious wife and an incompetent caddy.