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A German-American naval officer takes revenge against the German submarine commander who brutalized his wife.

A widely respected deep-sea diver is approached by a ring of con artists who want him to be the front man for a phony scheme to recover gold from sunken ships. When he refuses, they send a sexy young woman to seduce his son, and then blackmail the father into going along with their scheme.

A gold prospector strikes it rich, but the crooks who run a frontier town take it away from him. He determines to get it back and clean up the town.

In 17th-century England, an outlaw clan kidnaps a young girl, who grows up among them. The farm boy who met her just before the kidnapping eventually rescues her, and they fall in love.

Christ takes on the form of a pacifist count to end a senseless war.

A troubled young woman comes to live with her estranged father on the New York waterfront. A tough sailor falls in love with her, sparking conflict between her father and her suitor. What neither knows is that she has a secret that could cause her to lose both of them.

An attorney's wife is determined to fight the evils of addictive substances.

Nancy, a naive young girl who works backstage at a musical-comedy theatre, learns from the chorus girls the notion of winning a man by the seductive method of "vamping" him. She tries the method on the shy minister she loves, and it works. They marry and resettle in a mining town where a German operative foments dissension amongst the miners. Nancy is called upon to use her vamping technique once more to get the best of the German spy.

A young baseball pitcher in the bush leagues is discovered by a big-league manager and given his chance in the major leagues. But will he be up to the challenge?

Wealthy Bruce MacAllister is goaded by his fiancée, Helen Sumner, into proving that he is a man of action rather than a pampered youth. After telling his estate administrator, Eugene Preston, that he is going east for a meeting, Bruce dons a disguise and infiltrates the San Francisco, CA, underworld. Bruce is mistaken for master criminal "The Chicago Kid" and finds himself leading the gang in a robbery of his own fortune in diamonds. When he discovers Eugene's intention to steal the jewels for himself, the loot changes hands many times. Helen summons the police, the criminals are arrested, and Bruce wins her respect.

Ulysses S. Grant Briggs, raised by his grandfather Thaddeus, who served under General Grant, grows up with the General as his hero even though his neighbor, former Confederate soldier Jeff Hanan, argues that General Lee was the better man. When war is declared, Thaddeus and Jeff forget their differences and train Ulysses for military service. At the camp amateur show, Ulysses falls in love with dancer Betty Martin, but remembering Thaddeus' admonition to "watch out for play actresses," Ulysses avoids her. When dissolute Harry Weller lures Betty to a notorious roadhouse, Ulysses follows, knowing he can be court-martialed. Hearing Betty struggle, Ulysses fights Weller and keeps the military police from entering until Betty can escape through a window. Ulysses then is sent to the guardhouse where Thaddeus and Jeff unsuccessfully try to convince him to talk. After Betty confesses, the commanding officer, Thaddeus and Jeff agree that Ulysses did what both Grant and Lee would have done.

Ne'er-do-well Homer Cavender ventures to the city from Mainsville in an effort to find fame and fortune. Both elude him, and after clerking for two years, Homer returns home for a vacation. Impressed by his flashy clothes, the townspeople assume that Homer has achieved success. Attempting to win Rachel Prouty from his rival, Arthur Machim, Homer continues the deception by announcing that his employer, Kort and Bailly, has dispatched him to enroll stockholders for a proposed new plant to be built in Mainsville. Machim discovers the sham and denounces Homer as a crook. Meanwhile, Homer returns to New York, convinces his employers of the merits of his plan and comes home triumphant, with a proposal for both the new plant and for Rachel's hand in marriage.

Cynthia Brock, accustomed to expensive clothes and fashionable society, finds herself destitute when her father dies. After Fenwick Flint, who recently acquired great wealth, learns that Cynthia owes her dressmaker over $6,000, he attempts to use her to seduce James Gordon, the husband of the woman Flint desires. Although Cynthia refuses at first, when Flint offers her $10,000 she agrees, but at a mountain lodge, after becoming Gordon's friend, Cynthia feels remorseful and tries to get out of the deal. Hearing her sobs, Gordon enters her room and is caught by the conspirators with his arms around her. Gordon agrees to a divorce and offers to marry Cynthia to protect her reputation, but she confesses the scheme. After returning Flint's money, she finds work as a stenographer and pays her debt. Flint marries Gordon's ex-wife, but they later separate, while Gordon, formerly embittered, meets Cynthia again, and they marry.

Freddy Wetherill and his bride, Hyla, quarrel at her mother's beach cottage, and Hyla sends her new husband home alone. Seeking distraction from his troubles, Freddy enters a vaudeville theater where Undine, "the diving Venus," and her trained seal, Bubbles, are performing. Outside the theater, Freddy meets Undine's fiancé, George Fitzgerald, and becomes involved in George's effort to hide Undine's seal from a bill collector armed with an order of attachment because of an unpaid hotel bill. Complications arise when Freddy Wetherill's dying rich uncle, Cato Dodd, notifies him that he wants Hyla to nurse him. To insure he stays in his uncle's will, Freddy substitutes Undine for Hyla and takes George along to act as his "valet." Naturally, Bubbles comes along, too. Hyla soon arrives in jealous pursuit, just in time for a nearby dam to break. As the Dodd home and other houses float downriver, various swept-away circus animals, including an alligator and a rhinoceros, find shelter with the humans on the roofs. The cab driver that brought Hyla to the house is also swept away, but he keeps the meter running in hopes of getting her back in his taxi. Bubbles rescues everyone with a floating telegraph pole, Freddy reconciles with his loving wife, and Uncle Dodd remains kindly disposed to his heir.

David Harrington plans to marry Betty Graves. He is an old-fashioned boy, believing in marriage, having children, and living a suburban life. Betty is more ultra-modern, and independent. When Betty gets a tour of the bungalow that David has built for them, she says it's cute but she would hate to have to live in it. The two break up and Betty goes back to a former sweetheart. Sybil, the wife of David's friend Herbert, has just has a row with her husband because he wouldn't buy her a new hat. So she takes their three children and hides in David's home, hoping to throw a scare into her husband. Now David tries to take care of the kids, hoping to forget his own troubles. Herbert phones David that he is coming over, but David tells his friend he has the measles. Meanwhile, Sybil's kids have gotten sick from eating too much taffy. So David calls Betty's father, who is a doctor. Betty comes over with her father, and David cooks up a scheme with the doctor to quarantine the house so that Betty will have to stay and help him take care of the children. Herbert arrives and chaos ensues when he discovers his wife and kids are there. Eventually, things get straightened out and David regains Betty's love.

A young attorney hopes to better his position in the business world by making a favorable impression socially. But his wife, a careless and slovenly woman, presents an obstacle to his hopes. He begins to squire about his secretary, and an affair ensues. His wife, however, decides she can go him one better and embarks on a change in lifestyle.

Traveling saleswoman Mary Marbury thrashes a masher on a train when he tries to kiss a young girl in a tunnel. After the man and his female companion are escorted from the train, Mary encounters them again in New York City, where they attempt to marry the children of her wealthy employer, Jonas Abbott, then pose as cubist art instructors Fernando Poyntier and his sister, Marcia. Jonas worries that his son and Mary's fiancé, Raymond, is leading a frivolous life in the city's Bohemian community. Mary plots to incur the boy's jealousy by posing as an adventuress leading Jonas astray. When the Poyntiers suspect that the Abbott fortune could go to Mary instead of to them, they rob Jonas's safe and hide the money on his yacht, on which they plan to escape. Exhausted from dancing the fox-trot, Mary and Abbott rest on the yacht, and she discovers the money. When the crooks are captured, Raymond, realizing his love for Mary, proposes.

While walking along the street one day, Arthur P. Hampton, an impoverished young doctor, and his chums, Stub Masters and Johnny Stokes, are persuaded to part with their last remaining funds by tag day solicitor Mary Jane Smith, with whom the doctor promptly falls in love. Doc's friends then hit upon a get-rich-quick scheme. Knowing that his Uncle George has promised a large sum of money upon his nephew's marriage, they persuade Doc to send out fake wedding invitations naming Mary Jane as the blushing bride. Uncle George, elated at the good news, writes to Mary Jane's aunt, Angelica Burns, an old sweetheart, to invite Mary Jane and Angelica to be his guests on an ocean voyage. Meanwhile, Mary Jane pays a visit to the doctor's office and, upon seeing the wedding invitations, becomes so flustered that she trips and sprains her ankle. Doc comes to her rescue and then begs her to pose as his wife. She agrees, but at ship-side, Stub and Johnnie confess all to Uncle George, who flies into a rage until Doc announces that he and Mary Jane have chosen a wedding at sea.

After serving 5 years in prison for embezzling church funds, Dr. Ephraim Nye returns to Ostable and the scornful gossip of its residents, led by Althea Bemis. There is a typhoid epidemic, and Dr. Nye believes it to be caused by the water in a pond that Judge Copeland, the brother of Dr. Nye's dead wife, Fanny, wishes to use as the source of municipal water supply. Only Katherine Minot supports Dr. Nye, but biologists prove him correct; and Dr. Nye confronts Copeland with proof that he went to prison to protect Fanny, the actual criminal. Copeland finally consents to the marriage of his daughter, Faith, to Tom Stone, the son of his enemy; and Katherine spreads the news of her engagement to Dr. Nye through Althea.

Matthew Denton is a product of a New England village. His father was a prominent business man who, during the latter part of his life, had encouraged a number of his fellow-townsmen to invest in the Centipede Company, owners of Texas oil property. Matthew lives with his widowed mother. She showers a wealth of motherly care on him, and refuses to permit him to mingle with the other lads of the town, with the result that he grows up tied to her apron strings and is known as "his mother's boy." The purchasers of the Centipede stock receive notice that there will be no dividend, that the stock gives every indication of becoming worthless because of a loss in the wells' producing capacity. A delegation of townspeople call on Matthew's mother and denounce her late husband for having induced them to purchase the stock. Matthew overhears the tirade, comes to his mother's assistance, and declares that none shall lose a penny through this investment, for he will go to Texas, work in the oil fields himself, and eventually pay off the investors. The story shifts from the quaint New England village to a bustling town in Texas, a typical oil town with its hordes of workers, its rudely constructed hotel and ever-present bar, and its town drunkard, who has a wife and a pretty daughter. Matthew begins his career as a workman in one of the oil wells, lives at Mrs. Glenny's boardinghouse, and meets her daughter daughter Mabel. , and lives at the boarding house of Mrs. Glenny, where he meets her daughter, Mabel. To procure liquor money, town drunk Tom Glenny has been tapping the line of the Centipede Company and diverting the flow into another concern. Most of the workers live at the Glenny home, among them Banty Jones, the town bully, who paid Tom Glenny to tap the Centipede line. Banty wants to marry Mabel Glenny, but Matthew wins her love, and the girl proudly displays an engagement ring, Jones gives Matthew 24 hours in which to leave town, with the alternative of being the target for Jones' gun. Matthew's innate timidity makes him cower at Jones' verbal attacks, much to Mabel's disgust; she returns the ring and announces that the engagement is off. Meanwhile, Matthew has discovered the parallel pipe lines, and that night sees Tom Glenny about to tap the Centipede line. He hurries to the telegraph office and notifies the president of the Centipede Company of his discovery. Later, Matthew overhears Jones denounce Tom Glenny for failing to tap the line, and, as he realizes the father of the girl he loves has only been the tool of the bully, the hitherto timid and shrinking boy suddenly turns into a ferocious being. When Jones attempts to assault him he returns his blows with such effectiveness that the battle is soon over, and in Matthew's favor. Then follow a series of exciting episodes, the story ending happily.

Two years after the Great War, during which they did relief work together in Belgium, Leonore Bewlay meets her old friend Richard Valyran in Switzerland. Previously their friendship was platonic, but Richard now finds Leonore sexually attractive. On their way to an inn high in the Alps, they are caught in a snow-slide and Leonore's leg is injured. Val carries her to the inn, helps remove her clothes, and, overcome with desire, kisses her madly. This display of lust destroys their friendship. Leonore soon marries Henry Wallis, whom she truly loves, and returns with him to his home in London where she is unpopular with his conservative family, who consider her too outspoken and independent. When Leonore is named as the corespondent in a divorce suit filed by Richard's estranged wife, Henry loses faith in her. When she goes to Richard for consolation, he perceives that she still loves Henry and deliberately walks in front of an oncoming car. As he lies dying in a hospital, Richard has the final satisfaction of seeing Henry and Leonore reconciled, to be saved from the consequences of scandal by his imminent death.

Lawrence Revel, celebrated in society circles for his success with women, is devoted to his son Dick and objects to his marrying Nellie, a cabaret dancer. To prove her unworthiness, Beau asks his son not to see her for 2 weeks. Unwittingly, Beau falls in love with the girl, but his attentions are refused. When Nellie's brother gets involved with the law, she seeks Beau's aid, but Dick arrives and a stormy scene ensues. Following his son's reproach, Beau leaps from the window to his death, and Dick seeks Nellie's forgiveness.

Oliver Beresford is a stern, Puritanical, uncompromisingly rigid father. When shameful stories about his daughter Judith surface, he instantly bans her from his home rather than determine whether the stories are true. Her brother David, a pusillanimous reprobate, has secretly married and fathered, then abandoned, a child. Judith takes care of the baby and finds a way to restore her family through the love for the child.

Putting Barnum's axiom "There's one born every minute" to the test, a young man tries to boost business at his newly inherited drug store by concocting and selling a phony miracle cure-all powder.

Wealthy young Billy Bates's greatest fear is that he has inherited his family curse: drink. But when he falls for a beautiful showgirl from the Ziegfeld Follies, she shows him he has nothing to fear.