Chicago

Jazz age youngster Smoke Thatcher "borrows" a neighbor's car to take Patsy, his sweetheart, to a dance after his father refuses to lend him his car. A car-fight with a rival results in the borrowed automobile's being so wrecked that Smoke cannot return it. The garage to which he and Patsy take the car for repair turns out to be actually a gang's hideaway and a place where stolen cars are brought and later fenced.

A duke has deposed Prince Mauritz's father, so Mauritz spends his time in affairs with a countess, the duke's wife and a gypsy girl Adrienne. Years later she is a famous actress in a play resembling the sad story of their earlier relationship. He falls in love with her again. The jealous duchess and the duke arrange to have him shot by firing squad but revolutionaries save him and make him King.

Wholesome country girl Mary works at the House of Magic beauty salon and pines for the owner Clay. Unfortunately Clay has also been targeted by experienced vamp Rita.

Barbara Fiske, a beautiful girl of social standing, is about to be married to Lloyd Van Courtland. On the eve of their marriage, she foolishly pays a visit to a colorful steamship captain aboard his ship.

A country doctor helps a young couple to elope, and comes near to losing his practice and his happiness through the hostility of the boy's father.

A movie actress, mistakenly thinking she has killed a fellow actor, goes on the run and finds herself taken in by a Kentucky mountain family.

A stormy marriage of 6 months between Narcissa and Peter Williams ends in a bitter quarrel, and to gain his freedom Peter offers her more alimony than he can afford. Then he meets Mary Martin, who restores his faith in marriage. With business reverses, Peter falls behind in his alimony payments and neglects his new wife. Narcissa, however, manages to support Bertie Waring, a young sofa-hound; but she protests the delayed alimony and Mary is forced to take a job with an interior decorating establishment. Peter goes to Narcissa to appeal to her generosity, at the moment when Mary (unaware of Narcissa's identity as her husband's first wife) is working in Narcissa's apartment; seeing them together, Mary leaves in humiliation and accepts an invitation from Bertie....

Jimmy Gilley is engaged to Fanny Blaine. Jimmy would like to live in a more luxurious style, so he and Fanny urge her sister Virginia to marry the wealthy Robert Stafford despite her lack of love for him. She does so and the couple is happy for a time. But Robert begins drinking and eventually mistreats Virginia until she is forced to leave him.

In the office of Major Northfield, the quartermaster of the Pacific Coast, a leak has been discovered which may endanger the safety of American transports that are secretly carrying troops across the Pacific. Nara-Nara, a Japanese detective, is assigned to the case because his country has guaranteed safety to these transport ships. Nara-Nara believes that Northfield is guilty, although in reality it is Northfield's secretary Kitty Little, a girl of German ancestry, who is passing information to Dr. Ebell Smith, a German agent. Nara-Nara falls in love with Kitty, but soon after discovers that she is the leak in the quartermaster's office.

Harriet Craig, whose obsession with material possessions and immaculate neatness results in misery for all concerned. Harriet's husband remains blind to his wife's selfishness-until his eyes are opened when he is implicated in a double murder...

Joe, a weakling gangster, and Bob, an ex-gambler, compete for Lyla Mason, a working girl who also runs a 10th Avenue rooming house in New York city. Bob's desire to show Lyla he can support her leads him back to the gambling table when past-due rent threatens her with eviction. Bob and Joe are both suspected when Fink, a bootlegger, is found murdered in his room.