
The brightest stars and celebrated movies spanning the Golden Ages of Hollywood.
Cellist Karel Novak (Paul Henreid) was presumed to be killed during the war; so his sudden return surprises everyone, especially his lover Christine Radcliffe (Bette Davis). She is overjoyed that he is alive, but their reunion is uneasy, as he suspects that she found someone else in his absence. Still, they quickly marry in an attempt to rebuild their lives. At their wedding the jealous behavior of Composer Alexander Hollenius (Claude Rains) leads Karel to suspect that he may be the other man.
Pregnant nineteen-year old Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) is sentenced to prison as an accessory to robbery. The warden, Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead), dedicated to reforming even the most hardened of the prisoners, deals fairly with Marie, even upon learning of her condition. The naïve Marie comes up against tough block matron Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson) and must decide whether accepting the friendship of the toughest prisoners will rub off on her and affect the future of her unborn child.
A Dutch clerk (Claude Rains) flees to Paris with his crooked boss's money and meets the woman (Märta Torén) behind the man.
A woman is found dead in what seems to be a suicide at the estate of radio host Victor Grandison (Claude Rains). Grandison, who reads chilling murder mysteries on the radio, is at first suspected of murder but is quickly able to clear his name with the police. Then mysterious Steven Francis Howard (Michael North) arrives, claiming to be the husband of Grandison's niece -- who was thought dead in a shipwreck. Howard begins looking into the suicide and soon brings to light new evidence.
Christabel Caine (Joan Fontaine) has the face of an angel and the heart of a swamp rat. She'll step on anyone to get what she wants, including her own family. A master of manipulation, she covertly breaks off the engagement of her trusting cousin, Donna (Joan Leslie), to her fabulously wealthy beau, Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott). Once married to Curtis herself, Christabel continues her affair with novelist Nick Bradley (Robert Ryan), who knows she's evil, but loves her anyway.
Roustabout Stanton Carlisle joins a traveling carny and unsuccessfully schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband, Pete. But when Pete dies, Zeena is forced to take on Stanton as a partner, and he quickly proves more gifted than his predecessor. Ambitious to a fault, Carlisle abandons Zeena and the carny to reinvent himself as The Great Stanton, wowing high-class audiences in a Chicago hotel.
Tailor Jonah Goodwin (Thomas Mitchell) and lowly cook Olaf Johnson (John Qualen) are saving their money to go in as partners on a large fishing boat and make a long-desired career change. One night, small-time gangster Harold Goff (John Garfield) bullies them into paying him five dollars a week and then has them sign a document saying the money is repayment on a loan. When Jonah's self-centered daughter Stella (Ida Lupino) takes up with Goff, the pair decide to do away with him.
Novelist Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) and publisher Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer) intend to show how lawyer Roy Thompson (Philip Bourneuf) has been using circumstantial evidence in capital punishment trials. They concoct a scheme in which flimsy evidence will point to Garrett as a murder suspect, but Spencer will exonerate him at the end. Meanwhile, they keep the plan a secret from Spencer's daughter, Susan (Joan Fontaine), who is engaged to Garrett. However, the trial doesn't go as planned.