Despite her mother's objections, the naive young daughter of a show boat captain is thrust into the limelight as the company's new leading lady.

Francis Ryan, living high-and-free-wheeling life as the wife of gangster "Smiley" Ryan, spends some time behind bars as a result of her husband's activities, and, when she gets out, realizes she has been a bad example for her kid-sister, Jennie White, and five of her friends. With the aid of her old boyfriend, she manages to divert them from their juvenile-delinquent path leading to disaster for each.

The ghost of a recently deceased family patriarch tries to help his surviving relatives, in part by preventing a marriage that he knows will go wrong.

While participating in a contest at a local newspaper in which school children are asked to submit a news story, local attorney Carson Drew's daughter Nancy intercepts a real story assignment. She "covers" the inquest of the death of a woman who was poisoned. Nancy doesn't think the young woman accused of the crime is guilty and corrals her neighbor Ted into searching for a vital piece of evidence and stumbles onto the identity of the real killer.

A runaway orphan is befriended by a kind-hearted pet store owner with a criminal past.

A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.

A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing to possess her.