Scattergood Baines, Coldriver's most popular citizen, neighborly counselor and sly old fox, entices a Broadway producer to Coldriver to see the gay musical extravaganza Baines is staging for the benefit of the U.S.O. He is also promoting the singing career of his latest local protégé, Betty Palmer. There are a few problems but the Sage of Coldriver manages to keep pulling the right strings.

Mary Whitman has gone to Reno to obtain a divorce. While there she is arrested on suspicion of murdering a fellow guest at her hotel (which specializes in divorcers). There are many others at the hotel who wanted the victim out of the way. Charlie comes from his home in Honolulu to solve the murder.

Although Charlie and Lee are in Monaco for an art exhibit, they become caught up in a feud between rival financiers which involves the Chan's in a web of blackmail and murder.

On a cruise ship from Honolulu to San Francisco, the famous Chinese detective encounters four more murders while trying to figure out the murder of a Scotland Yard friend.

In Rio de Janiero to arrest a nightclub singer on suspicion of a murder in Hawaii, Charlie Chan becomes involved with the Rio police in solving the singer's own murder.

Amateur sleuth Ellery Queen learns the truth about a businessman's two long-lost daughters.

In this crime drama, a gangster uses an innocent newsboy to manipulate the jury just prior to his manslaughter trial. The 10-year-old newsboy idolizes the gangster. Eventually the lad's admiration comes to deeply affect the gangster who begins to soften up. Meanwhile his moll plans to rob him. The newsboy intervenes and stops her.

Radio star Jack Benny, intending to stay in New York for the summer, is forced by the needling of rival Fred Allen to prove his boasts about roughing it on his (fictitious) Nevada ranch. Meanwhile, singer Joan Cameron, whom Jack's fallen for and offended, is maneuvered by her sisters to the same Nevada town. Jack's losing battle to prove his manhood to Joan means broad slapstick burlesque of Western cliches.

A young doctor is determined to expose the killer when a surgeon is found stabbed to death in a hospital elevator.

A neurotic editor sees a psychoanalyst about the advertising man, movie star and other man in her life.