Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?

In 1932, a cop is killed and Frank Wiecek sentenced to life. Eleven years later, a newspaper ad by Frank's mother leads Chicago reporter P.J. O'Neal to look into the case. For some time, O'Neal continues to believe Frank guilty. But when he starts to change his mind, he meets increased resistance from authorities unwilling to be proved wrong.

A single mistake puts a 19-year old girl behind bars, where she experiences the terrors and torments of women in prison.

The Grimm brothers Wilhelm and Jacob, known for their literary works in the nineteenth century, have their lives dramatized. Wilhelm fights to write something entertaining amongst the sea of dry, non-fiction books they write and he sets about collecting oral-tradition fairy tales to put into print. Their life story is countered with reenactments of three of their stories including "The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves" and "The Singing Bone."

Johnny Stiletto, godfather to the Cauliflower Cupids gang (six world boxing champions), decides to leave crime so his daughter can have a better life.

The two partners of a ladies' garter business are constantly feuding with each other. When they ask their lawyer to dissolve their partnership, he proposes that instead the two of them play a single poker hand: the loser to become the winner's personal manservant for a year.

The "one desire" of ex-gambler Clint Saunders and bar woman Tacey Cromwell is to escape their shady former lives and settle down to respectability. With Clint's younger brother and an orphaned girl in tow, the couple moves to a Colorado mining town where their love is tested by Judith Watrous, daughter of the town banker, who has her sights on Clint.

Society girl becomes a social secretary when her father dies penniless. From a story by Charles Brackett.

Much to the disapproval of his snooty children, a wealthy widowed attorney takes up with a beautiful but "lower-class" woman.

Jay Follet is suffering a mid-life crisis while his wife, Mary, is expecting their second child. When Jay takes his family to visit his 103-year-old grandmother, he begins to realize that life is passing by too quickly. He turns more and more toward alcohol to escape from reality. When Jay doesn't come home one night, Mary learns that he was in an accident and waits anxiously for his return. Screen adaptation of Tad Mosel's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning play based on James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel A Death in the Family.