Photographer Bob loses his girlfriend. A year later he meets Kathleen. Is she in love? Or does she use him for her dark dealings with the mafia?

On a tour of Britain in 1926, Harry Houdini enters into a passionate affair with a psychic out to con the famous magician.

A powerful entrepreneur wants to build an exclusive resort hotel in Villanova, but he discovers the location he has in mind is protected by local land-use regulations. He hires Maria, a beautiful and elegant prostitute, to seduce the mayor, leaving him open to blackmail if he won't give the entrepreneur what he wants. Maria has no trou...

The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.

16-year-old Mari, raised without a mother by a drunkard father, is put in an orphanage which she immediately, though unsuccessfully, tries to flee from. The sensitive Mari finds it hard to adapt to the coarse manners and brutal games amongst the children. Only gradually does she develop a sense for the similarly difficult fates of her ...