The French Revolution, 1794. The Marquis de Lafayette asks Charles D'Aubigny to infiltrate the Jacobin Party to overthrow Maximilian Robespierre, who, after gaining supreme power and establishing a reign of terror ruled by death, now intends to become the dictator of France.
Tacey and Harry King are a suburban couple with three sons and a serious need of a babysitter. Tacey puts an ad in the paper for a live-in babysitter, and the ad is answered by Lynn Belvedere. But when she arrives, she turns out to be a man. And not just any man, but a most eccentric, outrageously forthright genius with seemingly a million careers and experiences behind him.
A couple discovers that their friend has gone missing. Their investigation leads them to believe that anti-semites are behind the disappearance.
The election to determine if Texas will become a state is near and men opposed are running contraband across the border. Sunset and Frog are Border Patrolmen and have an agent that tips them off by carrier pigeon. The Army arrives and the commander is Sunset's brother. When the agent is found out and murdered, his fake replacement then leads the soldiers astray.
A playboy marries a woman doctor then grows jealous of her male patients.
Janie is a telephone operator who is caught up in the lines of love of three men: car salesman Tom, Chicago millionaire Dick and auto mechanic Harry. But Janie just can't seem to make up her mind between them. While fantasizing about her futures with each of the men, Janie spends her time desperately trying to juggle between them until she can make a decision.
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.
In his first starring Western for RKO, young Tim Holt must not only carry on his father's freight business but also hunt down his murderer. A certain Matt Gardner wants to corner the freight business to Pecos and persuades young Zack Sibley's wagon master to switch sides. Zack also earns the enmity of Gardner's son Coe, who takes umbrage to the youngster's flirtation with pretty Helen Lee. It all comes to a head during a food shortage in Pecos, a near-disaster that persuades the wagon master to switch sides once again. When the dust settles, Zack learns that old man Gardner is actually Carl Anderson, the man who murdered his father.
Years after she was presumed dead in a shipwreck, Ellen Arden returns home to the surprise of her husband recently remarrying. But he too gets a shock when he learns that Ellen spent her time alone on an island with another man.
University professor George Kingsley is struck by gangsters while crossing the street, leaving him with brain damage and one of the gangsters, Cannon, paralyzed. Kingsley's friend Dr. Sovac attends to both men, and when Cannon offers him a reward for aiding his recovery, Kovac transplants part of Cannon's brain into the dying Kingsley's skull, creating a dual personality.
Roberta Morgan is being raised in a wealthy home where her mother is occupied with her society-club activities and her father is immersed in his business activities. She also feels that the household staff is against her and that no one understands her needs and problems. Things spiral out of control.
Jonathan Pride is a mild-mannered dance instructor in 1820 Boston. En route to visit relatives, Jonathan is shanghaied by a band of zany pirates and forced to work as a galley boy. When the pirate vessel arrives at the port of Las Palomas, Jonathan, clad in buccaneer's garb, makes his escape. Everyone in Las Palomas, including Governor Alcalde (Frank Morgan) and fetching senorita Serafina (Steffi Duna), assumes that Jonathan is the pirate chieftain, leading to a series of typical comic-opera complications.
Warner Baxter plays the ambitious producer of a burlesque show who rises to the big time on Broadway. Alice Faye is the loyal burleycue singer who helps make Baxter a success. His head turned by sudden fame, Baxter falls under the spell of a society woman (Mona Barrie) who has theatrical aspirations of her own. She marries Baxter, then convinces him to produce a string of "artistic" plays rather than his extravagant musical revues. The plays are flops, and the woman haughtily divorces Baxter. Faithful Alice Faye, who'd gone to London when her ex-beau was married, returns to the penniless Baxter. She and her burlesque buddies team up to pull Baxter out of his rut and put him on top again.