Joe Palooka goes blind during a fight. An operation restores his vision, but he's told not to fight for a year. His trainer Knobby has picked up another fighter, but gangsters are pressing him to fix fights. Joe decides to risk his eyesight to save Knobby's honor.
Art editor Madeleine Damian carries on numerous loveless affairs. After a failed relationship with advertiser Felix Courtland, the increasingly depressed Madeleine attempts suicide. When Jack Garet, her secretary and former lover, tries to blackmail her, Madeleine resigns and seeks a reclusive life. Neighbor David Cousins befriends Madeleine, but soon Courtland and Garet discover her whereabouts and disrupt her new life.
Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan discovers a scheme for the theft of government radar plans while investigating several murders.
An unhappy, self-centered woman runs off with her sister's husband, wreaking havoc and ruining the lives of those around her.
The trustees of Midwestern University have forced three teachers out of their jobs for being suspected communists. Trustee Ed Keller has also threatened mild mannered English Professor Tommy Turner, because he plans to read a controversial piece of prose in class. Tommy is upset that his wife Ellen also suggested he not read the passage. Meanwhile, Ellen's old boyfriend, the football player Joe Ferguson, comes to visit for the homecoming weekend. He takes Ellen out dancing after the football rally, causing Tommy to worry that he will lose her to Joe.
Steel-worker brothers compete for the same woman.
After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
A champion auto racer who unhappily learns his kid brother wants to enter the same profession rather than finish school.
Football scout for the Chicago Packers Rusty Walker signs Harry Lynn, a legendary broken-field runner. Harry won't leave his home town without his girlfriend Maizie Williams. He gets tangled up with gamblers and Rusty's girl Evelyn Corey makes a play for him.
A paroled convict's efforts to improve conditions at a boys' reform school alarm the school's corrupt warden, who has been embezzling funds from the institution. He hatches a plan to derail the reformed convict's efforts and have him sent back to prison, and part of that scheme involves cracking down hard on the reform school's inmates.
The MGM crime reporter introduces Norman Kennedy, District Attorney of a large city, he who talks about the general want for money, and the extraordinary lengths some will go to to get it. The loan sharking business has that want for money on both sides. He tells the story of one such loan shark, Stephen Hanley, who tried to pass his company off as a legitimate loan business, but who charged exorbitant rates, and used extortion and fraud to get out of his customers even more than what they may have owed on paper.
A detective and his bumbling sidekick join the crackdown on racketeering in '30s New York City.