The Big Shakedown

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

New Moon is the name of the ship crossing the Caspian Sea. A young Lt. Petroff meets the Princess Tanya and they have a ship board romance. Upon arriving at the port of Krasnov, Petroff learns that Tanya is engaged to the old Governor Brusiloff. Petroff, disillusioned, crashes the ball to talk with Tanya. Found by Brusiloff, they invent a story about her lost bracelet. To reward him, and remove him, Brusiloff sends Petroff to the remote, and deadly, Fort Darvaz. Soon, the big battle against overwhelming odds will begin.

Two young Chicago hoodlums, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, rise up from their poverty-stricken slum life to become petty thieves, bootleggers and cold-blooded killers. But with street notoriety and newfound wealth, the duo feels the heat from the cops and rival gangsters both. Despite his ruthless criminal reputation, Tom tries to remain connected to his family, however, gang warfare and the need for revenge eventually pull him away.

Story of an unhappy wife of oil rigger who labors in a Central American oil field. The bored Susan falls in love with Walt's good friend Ken but keeps her husband in the dark about her feelings... until he's plunged into darkness for real when he loses his eyesight. Susan finds her attentions then wandering yet another man, Davis, and Ken urges her to return to Walt.

United States Federal agent Rigby travels to the Central American island Carlotta to investigate a stolen aircraft engines smuggling racket.

Rick Mason is the no-good lowdown rat who tries to capitalize on postwar patriotism and grief. He finagles a war widow into giving up her savings for a nonexistent memorial. When Mason falls in love with the widow he has pangs of conscience, but he reckons without his con-artist boss, who tends to bolster his arguments with muscle and bullets.

Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.

Jeannette Vaubernier, an impulsive shopgirl en route to deliver a hat, dreams of luxury and position as she saunters through the woods, and attracted by a pool of water, she disrobes and plunges in. Cosse de Brissac, a handsome private in the King's Guards, comes to her rescue and they become sweethearts. Meanwhile, Jean Du Barry, a shrewd roué, takes note of her at the millinery shop and tricks her into staying at La Gourda's, where she soon becomes a favorite among the men.

Passing herself off as a countess, glamorous Lucy Stavrin hobnobs with the rich and famous along the French Riviera. Aware that Lucy is a phony, jewel-thief Malatroff blackmails Lucy into helping him steal the valuable necklace owned by the young wife of phlegmatic American businessman Sylvester Corbett.

The friendship of two working stiff railroad engineers is put to the test when one falls for the other’s wife.

Wildly optimistic chatterbox Eva Lovelace is a would-be actress trying to crash the New York stage. She attracts the interest of a paternal actor, a philandering producer, and an earnest playwright. Is she destined for stardom, or will she fade like a morning glory after its brief blooming?

An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.

In an effort to be able to afford expensive treatment for her gravely ill American husband, a retired German entertainer returns to the cabaret as Blonde Venus and catches the eye of a wealthy politician.

When a woman accidentally kills her detested husband, a selfless young man takes the blame and goes to prison. Complications ensue when he is provisionally released.

An ex-con uses his street smarts to become a successful photojournalist.

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.

Four stories, humorous, romantic or dramatic, are linked by a counterfeit gold sovereign. It is made by the honest engraver in the first story, seduced by the charms of a young widow, and it subsequently passes into the hands of a beggar and a prostitute, a wealthy miser and a newly married couple where the husband is a poor artist.

A former GI gets his old job back working for a bookie after returning from serving in the military. Unfortunately, he loses the $20,000 he was supposed to deliver to gambling and a con artist. His attempts to get the money back leads to bigger problems including a murder plot.

On a cruise to Cuba, Lulu Smith falls in love with Bob Grover. Back home, she breaks off the romance when he tells her he is married. Lulu has a baby but doesn't tell Bob, who turns out to be a rising politician. She passes herself off as the baby's nanny. When Bob learns what is going on, he adopts the little girl, not telling his wife or anyone else where she came from. Lulu gets a job at a newspaper. Things get complicated when the editor gets the dirt on Bob, but also wants to marry Lulu.

At the height of the Great Depression, Tommy's mother has been out of work for months when Eddie's father loses his job. Eager not to burden their parents, the two high school sophomores decide to hop the freight trains and look for work.