Two romantic rivals play a game of pool for the hand of their lady love.

Judge Foster throws his daughter out because she married a circus man. She leaves her baby girl with Prof. McGargle before she dies. Years later Sally is a dancer with whom Peyton, a son of Judge Foster's friend, falls in love. When Sally is arrested McGargle proves her real parentage.

Joan Royle, beautiful but naive model who came from the slums, falls for Fred Ketlar, the leader of a dance band. When Fred's estranged wife Adele is murdered, Fred is arrested and convicted of the crime. Joan believes that the real murderer is Baretta, a gangster who was keeping Adele as his mistress.

Elmer Pettywillie is the owner of a small drug store in Florida, and Mildred Marshall is his clerk. Business is slow until George Delevan leases space in the store to sell New York real estate. Business is good, especially for George, but the sheriff comes looking for him and he departs the premises for places unknown. Elmer feels that he has been an unknowing accomplice in a con-game, and he heads for New York in his old Ford. But he heads in the wrong direction, gets lost a few times, gives up and starts back to his drugstore. Many townsmen are rushing toward him as he drives up the street, but they are running to congratulate him as George as returned bearing profits for all the local investors. All is well, other than Elmer ending up as a very reluctant fourth-party in a double-wedding ceremony.

An unlucky inventor's attempt to demonstrate his break-proof glass at a convention goes humiliatingly wrong, but his luck may be about to change when he runs into pretty young woman on the train ride home.

Pa Potter invests four thousand dollars in worthless oil stock. Or is it worthless?

Cowardly Elmer Finch is browbeaten by his wife, daughter, fat son and the family dog. After hypnosis he is domineering. He enters a contract with a fifteen-thousand dollar payoff, so his courage can last beyond the hypnosis.

Sheriff Ben Holden is in love with hotel owner Madge Malarkey when down-and-out carnival man Gabby Gilfoil shows up hoping to take her for some money. Gilfoil is mistaken for the wanted man Slippery Sawtelle. Neither suitor gets Malarkey but manage to take her husband (wealthy Simeon Trott) for a bundle.

The ring master is plotting to get the circus owner done away with in a lion cage so he can take over. World War I intervenes and eventually aids the Allied cause by joining the German army.

Samuel Hunter, the richest man in Huntersville, is an eccentric who convinces his fellow citizens to invest in an oil field marketed by Richard Whitehead. But Whitehead is a notorious swindler and the oil wells appear to be dry holes. Sam Hunter, however, comes up with a means of turning the tables on the swindler.

J. Effingham Bellweather plays golf despite many slapstick setbacks.

The wealthy von Wellingens are shocked when the father of their son Fred's fiancée Lia juggles desserts at a formal dinner. They encourage Fred to break the engagement. Lia goes to Berlin to marry a Baron von Schwarzdorf, and Fred arrives too late to stop the marriage.

A small country on the verge of bankruptcy is persuaded to enter the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a means of raising money. Either a masterpiece of absurdity or a triumph of satire, depending on your mood, but it's quite possibly the funniest movie ever made, and becomes even funnier with subsequent viewings.

After preliminaries with ice and golf dentist Fields turns to the problems of hius patients. He wrestles one woman all over the office during an extraction. One man is so heavily bearded he can't find the man's mouth and uses as shotgun to flush birds out.

A dying tycoon gives million-dollar windfalls to eight people picked from the city directory.

The prodigal son of a Yukon prospector comes home on a night that "ain't fit for man nor beast."

A henpecked but stoic pharmacist tries to maintains his precarious balance while dealing with demanding customers and his dysfunctional family.

Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention, television.

An inept barber maintains his good-humored optimism in his small town shop despite having a hen-pecking harridan for a wife and a total lack of tonsorial skill.

Tillie and Augustus Winterbottom are thought to be missionaries when they arrive to find Phineas Pratt trying cheat the Sheridans out of her father's inheritance, including a ferry franchise and a boat. The only way to keep the franchise is to win a race against Pratt's boat.

When a respectable middle-class couple take a cross-country trip by auto, they share expenses with a decidedly oddball couple, none of whom know the car carries embezzled funds.

Sam Bisbee is an inventor whose works (e.g., a keyhole finder for drunks) have brought him only poverty. His daughter is in love with the son of the town snob. Events conspire to ruin his bullet-proof tire just as success seems near. Another of his inventions prohibits him from committing suicide, so Sam decides to go on living..

The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.

The owner of a general store (Harold Bisonette) is hounded by his status-anxious wife ("That's 'Bee-soh-nay'" and "I have no maid you know"). To get some sleep he goes out on the porch where he is tormented by a little boy from the floor above (Baby Dunk) and an insurance salesman down below ("LaFong. Capital L, small a..."). He uses an inheritance to buy an orange ranch through the mail, then drives off with his family for California. The orange grove consists of a withered tree, the ranch house is but a shack, and the car falls to pieces. But a racetrack operator wants the land, so all ends happily.

Crosby plays a Philadelpia Quaker engaged to a Southern belle. He becomes a social outcast when he refuses to fight a duel. Fields then hires him to perform on his riverboat, promoting him as "Colonel Steel...the notorious Colonel Steel...the singing killer." The plot then follows a predictable course, but there are plenty of scenes featuring W.C. Fields.

Ambrose Wolfinger wants the afternoon off (his first in twenty-five years) to go to a wrestling match. He tells his boss that he must attend his mother-in-law's funeral. The afternoon is no joy. He tries to please a policeman, assist a chauffeur, chase a tire, and ends up getting hit by the body of a wrestler thrown from the ring. A series of mishaps leads his boss to send floral tributes to the house and notify the papers of the death (due to poisoned liquor). His shrewish wife, judgmental mother-in-law, and good-for-nothing brother-in-law add to his burdens. In the end he enjoys their fawning loyalty, a raise in pay, and his first vacation.

The Wiggs family plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in their rundown shack with leftover stew, without Mr. Wiggs who wandered off long ago an has never been heard from. Do-gooder Miss Lucy ...

Poppy, daughter of carnival medicine salesman Professor McGargle, falls in love with the Mayor's son. Countess Maggie Tubbs DePuizzi is claimant to the Putnam estates, but McGargle and lawyer Wiffen plot to make Poppy claim the fortune. Wiffen and the Countess double-cross the Professor, but kindly Sarah Tucker notices a resemble between Poppy and the deceased Mrs. Putnam. It turns out that McGargle adopted the girl, she is the rightful heir, the purported Countess is only a showgirl, and every one has a happy ending.

The Bellows family causes comic confusion on an ocean liner, with time out for radio-style musical acts.

Larson E. Whipsnade runs a seedy circus which is perpetually in debt. His performers give him nothing but trouble, especially Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Meanwhile, Whipsnade's son and daughter, Phineas and Vicky, attend a posh college. Vicky turns down her caddish but rich suitor Roger Bel-Goodie, but changes her mind when she learns of her father's financial troubles. Will Vicky marry for money or succumb to the ventriloqual charm of Edgar Bergen? Will Whipsnade's Circus Giganticus make it over the state line one jump ahead of the sheriff?

After a scandal runs a gold-digger out of town, she meets a con artist and becomes embroiled in a string of petty deceits.

Henpecked Egbert Sousé has comic adventures as a substitute film director and unlikely bank guard.

A filmmaker attempts to sell a surreal script he has written, which comes to life as he pitches it.

An actor, Paul Orman, is accidentally told that his new, custom made tail coat has been cursed and it will bring misfortune to all who wear it. As the 4 succeeding wearers of the coat discover, misfortune can often lead to truth.

During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.

Child film star Jane Powell, fed up with her every move being stage managed by her stage mother, runs away and joins the U.S. Crop Corps, a small army of young folks staying at youth hostels and picking crops while adult farmworkers are at war. Totally clueless about the real world, befuddled Jane is embroiled in teen-romance complications while Mother frantically searches. Will her stardom help or hinder her new friends? W.C. Fields does a short act with Bergen and McCarthy.