Rufus Billings was born premature and after a lifetime of doctors doting on his frail health he is now a hypochondriac of the first order. Now an adult Rufus has learned his late father has left him $750,000 but he won't inherit the sum for three more years. Rufus is certain he is on death's door and will never last three years so his Doctor arranges for a loan of $100,000 to pay for a live in nurse. Rufus only has to sign over his inheritance to the greedy trio of Clinch, McIntosh and Peck who along with the doctor are confident he'll live long enough to pay his debt.

A physician enacts revenge on the woman he loves after she marries another by treating her exhaustion with maddening drugs. The film depicts her descent into madness in a red-tinted trip to hell itself.

In 1856, slave Eliza plans to marry George with the consent of the Shelbys, her masters, but George's owner prevents the wedding. A few years later, Eliza flees with her son, Harry, after learning the Shelbys plan to hand them over to a crooked creditor to prevent foreclosure. George also escapes and goes on the run while Eliza and Harry are captured and brought back home. Mother and son are separated as George tries to find them both.

Two sailors (William Haines and Cliff Edwards) are leaving the US Navy after 10 years. In their spare time, one of them (Haines) invents a carburetor that should increase the speed that powered boats will run, but all they succeed in doing is sinking the Admiral's barge. After discharge, broke and out of work, they find work with a boat builder who wants the fastest race boat in the world. They design the boat, carburetor and the engine but lack of money and the foreclosure of the business hinders their efforts to prove the new design.

Wealthy racing driver Tom Hayden loses his inheritance and his fiancé due to a wacky mishap on his wedding day.

In order to secure a lucrative contract, a businessman hires a woman to pose as his wife at a business dinner when his own wife can't make it. Unfortunately, the woman he hires is the wife of an insanely jealous prizefighter.

An aspiring singer, who has fallen on hard times and is now living as a hobo, returns to his wealthy southern family.

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 chore for footloose Sally to remain faithful. Making matters worse is the arrival of a double-dyed villain (Robert Ellis) who intends to "have his way" with the long-suffering heroine.

This film sticks very closely to the Edna Ferber novel, rather than the musical based on the novel. There are only two major changes from Ferber's book : *Julie in this version is a white woman, not a racially mixed one; therefore she and her husband are not unlawfully married. * Ravenal returns at the end, instead of dying as in the novel