Stephen Sorrell, a decorated war hero, raises his son Kit alone after Kit's mother deserts husband and child in the boy's infancy. Sorrell loses a promising job offer and is forced to take work as a menial. Both his dignity and his health are damaged as he suffers under the exhausting labor and...
Juggler and con-artist Caesar comes to Karlsbad, where he hopes to trick the renowned Vaudeville manager Willard into taking him to America. But when he actually meets Willard, Caesar mistakes him for a certain Mr. Lehmann. Willard / Lehmann is not amused, since Caesar constantly courts his...
Fingers is planning a half-million-dollar bank robbery in gang boss Cobra Collins' territory. Fingers' moll Connie tries to bluff Cobra into thinking the hit won't be for another week when the call comes through saying it's now.
The story begins in 1923 where after an accident, a newspaper reporter needs to raise $5,000 to pay for an operation, otherwise his young sister will be crippled for life. The desperate reporter is finally able to get the cash from a shady acquaintance, Riggs. Eight years later in New York,...
Anna receives her first weekly wage: a ten-mark note with the no. K 13513. She gives it to her mother, who hides it in her Bible. Anna's brother Robert steals the note and uses it to buy a knife with which he becomes a murderer.
A con man with his beautiful accomplice and a hostage steals a half million dollars worth of diamonds but finds they're all lost in the desert without water.
Jockey Johnny Spencer loses his job with Mrs. Calhoun for throwing a race. An adventuress named Sybil, who made Johnny hold back Mrs. Calhoun's horse, Lady, leaves him, and he becomes a racetrack bum. Johnny returns to Mrs. Calhoun's stable when the new jockey proves unable to manage Lady. Johnny...
Barbary Coast, San Francisco. The gangster moll Belle gets deeply entangled with gangsters led by her boyfriend Vance. The professional writer John Banning understands why Belle got involved with these criminals. Banning tries to help her get out of that seedy life. However, It is not easy. A lot...
Freddie, a rich young idler, meets Julia Harrington, a wealthy social service worker who runs a haven for reformed criminals. By telling her he is a hardened criminal, he is allowed to stay at the mission.
Charming Sinners was a stilted adaptation of Somerset Maugham's play The Constant Wife. Robert Miles (Clive Brook) starts the ball rolling when he falls in love with Anne-Marie Whitley (Mary Nolan), the best friend of his own wife Kathryn (Ruth Chatterton). In retaliation, Kathryn begins a...
A man falsely accused of crime joins Foreign Legion, and when trouble develops is saved by the self sacrifice of the commanding officer, his own father.
Directed by Lupu Pick, who died far too young, it was billed as a melodrama about a ring of counterfeiters on its first screening in New York City. Pick plays with the already well-established conventions of the detective genre for maximum effect and humor.
Johnny Mack Brown stars as Paul, who wants nothing more out of life than to take charge of a lighthouse. Falling in love with Sally (Mary Nolan), Paul talks her into sharing his life as a lighthouse keeper. Evidently staring into the beacon once too often, Paul goes blind, and it's quite a ...
