The south sea island Tonga is full of plantations and scoundrels. Ellen Bradford arrives expecting marriage to respectable and successful plantation owner only to find he is a drunk and gambler. Being the only white woman she is the desire of scoundrels and cut-throats.
A distinguished English gentleman has a secret life--he is the notorious jewel thief the press has dubbed "The Amateur Cracksman". When he meets a woman and falls in love he decides to "retire" from that life, but an old friend comes to him with a predicament that entails him committing one last job.
A man who believes that love is more animal and chemical than spiritual, bets that by controlling the circumstances, he can get any man and woman to fall for with each other and get engaged within a month.
Kay Arnold is a gold digger who wanders from party to party with the intention of catching a rich suitor. Jerry Strong is a young man from a wealthy family who strives to succeed as an artist. What begins as a relationship of mutual convenience soon turns into something else.
Middle-aged Napa Valley grape-grower Tony posts a marriage proposal to San Francisco waitress Lena enclosing a photo of his handsome younger brother Buck. When she gets there she overlooks his duplicity and marries him. Then she falls in love with Buck.
Old sailor Chris Christofferson eagerly awaits the arrival of his grown daughter Anna, whom he sent at five years old to live with relatives in Minnesota. He has not seen her since, but believes her to be a decent and respectably employed young woman. When Anna arrives, however, it is clear that she has lived a hard life in the dregs of society, and that much of spirit has been extinguished. She falls in love with a young sailor rescued at sea by her father, but dreads to reveal to him the truth of her past. Both father and young man are deluded about her background, yet Anna cannot quite bring herself to allow them to remain deluded.
During a raid, a cop lets a pretty speakeasy employee escape and later begins dating her. Although she loves him, his salary and dull life leave her wanting.
Lally is a rich girl whose father writes books and plays polo. After 23 years of marriage her father decides to divorce Lally's mother and remarry to soon-to-be-divorced Beth Cheever. This sours Lally on all men. While on vacation with her mother she meets Jack, who succeeds in stealing her heart. Then Lally discovers that Jack is the son of Beth Cheever, the woman who is to marry her father.
Molly and Bee, sweet young 'working girls,' live in a cheap room over a New York grocery store. Molly's idol, wealthy Jack Cromwell, lives in a Long Island mansion but is markedly less happy, since his fiancée Jane won't discourage her other admirers. Fleeing in his car, Jack ends up in an urban block party where he meets you-know-who.
After a vaudeville performer is murdered backstage, framed-up evidence lead the police to arrest a troupe member. At his trial, Hermann, a Scandinavian clown known as Beppo, is the lone juror holding out against conviction and pleading for his innocence and acquittal.
While on leave in WW I France an English officer and French cabaret star fall in love with one another and plan to marry. However, he is recalled to the front, wounded and has memory loss.