WBLA is on the air, presenting the live music, the sudsy dramas and the sell-sell-sell of commercial interludes that keep consumers buying and sponsors smiling. But one sponsor, a producer of plumbing supplies, isn’t happy. So WBLA scriptwriter Bill Grimes is bounced from his job, setting in motion this movie’s turn from comedic to darkly tragic. William Haines, two years removed from being Tinseltown’s top male star, plays Grimes in a melodrama noted for its glimpses of live radio production and for a Depression-era ethos that includes peroxide cuties eager to land a job, a sugar daddy or both.

Gangsters try to get a boxer to throw an important fight.

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

Young Countess Wilma is forced to wed by midnight or lose her inheritance. Wilma impulsively chooses gypsy vagabond Latzi, offering him a huge sum of money if he'll consent. Swallowing his pride, Latzi agrees to the marriage, but soon Wilma falls in love with young Lieutenant Von Tokay who himself is in love with Latzi's gypsy sweetheart Timka.

As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement.

Phil, a part-time truck driver and singer who wears his pants far too high, meets a feisty platinum blonde who challenges him to a drag race through Griffith Park. When he is caught and loses his license, he meets up with the sketchy Frank Wooster who offers him a job singing in his new nightclub. When Phil discovers that his new job also includes drug running, he must fight to save his friends and himself.

In the carnival in Spain in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the exiled republican Antonio Galvan comes from Paris masquerade to enjoy the party and visit his friend Capt. Don Pasqual 'Pasqualito' Costelar. However, he flirts with the mysterious Concha Perez and they schedule to meet each other later. When Antonio meets Pasqualito, his old friend discloses his frustrated relationship with the promiscuous Concha and her greedy mother and how his life was ruined by his obsession for the beautiful demimondaine. Pasqualito makes Antonio promise that he would not see Concha. However, when Antonio meets Concha, she seduces him and the long friendship between Antonio and Pasqualito is disrupted

Buster Keaton's final silent feature, as well as the final film in which MGM allowed him any creative control.

Mabel goes home after being humiliated by a masher whom her wimpy husband won't fight. The husband goes off to a bar and gets drunk. She buys a boxing dummy hoping it will inspire her husband, but when he returns he gets in a fight with it, taking it to be the ladykiller.

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..