
A young songwriter leaves his Kentucky home to try to make it in New Orleans. Eventually he winds up in New York, where he sells his songs to a music publisher, but refuses to sell his most treasured composition: "Dixie." The film is based on the life of Daniel Decatur Emmett, who wrote the classic song "Dixie."

Parkhouse plays a practical joke on a poker-playing buddy by sending him home with a lady's chemise stuffed in his coat pocket. The gag backfires, whereupon Parkhouse finds himself in hot water with his own wife. Threatened with divorce, Parkhouse is advised by a zany astrologer to frame Mrs. P. in a compromising situation at the Hotel Haywire, enlisting amateur detectives Bert and Genevieve Sterns in his scheme.


Jury foreman Edward Weldon's questioning leads to the death sentence for Ethel Saxon. His daughter Stella claims to have killed her lover, the gangster Garboni, just as Saxon was to sit in the electric chair.

A café in Chicago, 1942. On a rainy night, veteran reporter Homer Howard tells an increasing audience the story of Roxie Hart and the crime she was judged for in 1927.

Oliver Quade is a pitchman who follows state fairs that feature dog shows---which limits his territory more than a little---at which he sells encyclopedias...and does it well as he possesses a photographic memory that amazes the rubes. The Champion, in the title, is a Great Dane who has won the title at the Rubeville State Fair, and it isn't long before the Champion turns up dead, which is because somebody---motive unknown at the moment---has killed the Champion. This is repeated at other shows along the way and Quade's bright young assistant, "Small Fry", fancies himself as an amateur detective, and starts nosing around into the mystery and drags Quade along with him.

The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.

A behind-the-scenes showcase of how screen tests for studio executives are made and used in the Hollywood casting process. Some of the featured performances include actress Betty Jane Rhodes and opera singer Gladys Swarthout.

A Broadway playboy inherits an almost bankrupt girls' school and tries to save it by a big show.

One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?

Fred Stevens is an aspiring songwriter from Schenectady who journeys to New York City, hoping to make a name for himself. On the train he meets dental assistant Edna Baker, and the two embark upon a friendship that evolves into her falling for him. While struggling in Tin Pan Alley, Fred falls in with his composer partner's gold-digging sister-in-law Eileen. Eileen really becomes interested when she finds out Fred is carrying his life savings.

A young South Seas native boy is sent to the U.S. for his education and returns to his island after his father dies to try to stop a revolution.


Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)

Ranger Don Stuart fights a forest fire with timber boss friend Tana 'Butch' Mason, and finds evidence of arson. He suspects Twig Dawson but can't prove it. Butch loves Don but he, poor fool, won't notice her as a woman; instead he meets socialite Celia in town and elopes with her. The action plot (Don's pursuit of the fire starter) parallels Tana's comic efforts to scare tenderfoot Celia back to the city.