After bank president David Dwight makes a vast loan to himself to build a remarkable skyscraper, his board questions the propriety of the loan. Despite the devotion of longtime mistress Sarah, the ruthless David, while seeking bank mergers to protect his building, tries to seduce Sarah's secretary, Lynn. David then agrees to a plot by a bank board member to inflate his bank's stock and sell short — just before the market crashes.

An American posing as a Russian prince woos a visiting Ohio heiress.

Five O. Henry stories, each separate. The primary one from the critics' acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem". Soapy tells fellow bum Horace that he is going to get arrested so he can spend the winter in a nice jail cell. He fails. He can't even accost a woman; she turns out to be a streetwalker. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief", and "The Gift of the Magi".

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.

A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, and then marches away to war.

Jack Oakie and Jack Haley are songwriters are enroute from New York to Hollywood to make their fame and fortune; Ginger Rogers, a lunchwagon proprieter, joins them.

The story of trench life during World War I through the lives of a French regiment. As men are killed and replaced jaunty Lt. Denet becomes more and more somber. His rival for the affection of nurse Monique is Capt. La Roche.

Radio singer Glory Eden is publicized as the ideal of American womanhood in order to sell the sponsor's product Ippsie-Wippsie Washcloths. In reality, Glory would like to at least sample booze, jazz, gambling, and men. When the strain of representing "purity" brings her to rebellion, the sponsor and his nutty henchmen pick her a public-relations "sweetheart" from fan mail, who turns out to be a hayseed.

A group of disillusioned American expatriate writers live a dissolute, hedonistic lifestyle in 1920's France and Spain.