Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption.

A grocery clerk, longing to become a cowboy actor, goes to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Unfortunately, his acting ability is non-existent.

The various residents and occupants of a resort hotel await the outcome of a horse race at a nearby track, as it will affect each of their lives in different ways.

In an effort to be able to afford expensive treatment for her gravely ill American husband, a retired German entertainer returns to the cabaret as Blonde Venus and catches the eye of a wealthy politician.

A drunken newspaperman, Jerry Corbett, is rescued from his alcoholic haze by an heiress, Joan Prentice, whose love sobers him up and encourages him to write a play, but he lapses back into dipsomania.

A Parisian tailor goes to a château to collect a bill, only to fall for an aloof young princess living there.

Naval commander Charles Sturm has made life miserable for his wife Diana due to his insane jealousy over every man she speaks to. His obsessive behavior soon drives her to the arms of a handsome lieutenant. When Charles learns of their affair, he plots revenge.

After being unjustly accused of spying, a British officer tries to redeem himself in India.

A white youth raised in the jungle by animals is captured by a safari and brought back to civilization as an attraction in a circus.

During the 1917 Russian revolution, a group of artistocrats find themselves in the custody of a brutal Communist revolutionary. He lusts after one of them, a ballerina, and gives her an ultimatum: give in to him or her friends will face the firing squad.

After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia, he begins to question the tyrannical leadership of the despotic emperor Nero.

Mr. Morris, the owner of a large metropolitan department store, gives jobs to paroled ex-convicts in an effort to help them reform and go straight. Among his 'employed-prison-graduates' are Helen Roberts and Joe Dennis, working as sales clerks. Joe is in love with Helen and asks her to marry him, but she is forbidden to marry as she is still on parole, but she says yes and they are married. In spite of their poverty-level life, their marriage is a happy one until Joe discovers she has lied about her past, in order to marry him. Disillusioned, he leaves, goes back to his old gang and plans to rob the department store.