The film greatly differs from the novel. Entire episodes and many characters are dropped, including the Thénardiers and Enjolras. The character of Robert is entirely new.
Poor health and alcoholism force Grover Cleveland Alexander out of baseball, but through his wife's faithful efforts, he gets a chance for a comeback and redemption.
1896. Le bandit John Wesley Hardin sort de prison après avoir purgé une longue peine, et remet au journal local le manuscrit de son autobiographie. Jeune homme, John rêvait de s'installer dans un ranch avec son amie d'enfance, Jane Brown. Mais, après une partie de poker ayant mal tourné, John a abattu un homme. Dès lors, la vie de John n'a été que fuites, duels au revolver, et affrontements avec les représentants de l'ordre…
Set in turn-of-the-century New York, wealthy playboy Charles Hill (Fred Astaire) is causing difficulties for his guardian, Aunt Lettie (Marjorie Main) and lawyer, Max (Keenan Wynn). Prone to fall in love then ditching his showgirl brides-to-be at the altar, the compensation bills are mounting. After the most recent episode, he hears Angela (Vera-Ellen) leading a Salvation Army band in song. He falls in love at first sight and when she scoffs at him, telling him that if he were in love his feet would leave the ground, he promptly floats high into the air. He pursues her, even vowing to do an honest day's work for the first time in his life. After various attempts to convince her, Angela's feeling finally cause her feet to leave the ground. After a couple of misunderstandings are resolved, they float into the air together, to a chorus of well-wishers below.
Marie (Simone Signoret), a woman of considerable beauty, is distressed at her treatment by Roland, a criminal who is a part of a local syndicate. When Marie is introduced to the handsome stranger Georges, a humble carpenter, she falls in love with him instantly, much to the chagrin of Roland. When Roland's jealousy builds after a number of meetings between Marie and Georges, Roland decides to confront Georges behind a club where a number members of his syndicate watch. After Georges gains control of a knife that had been thrown between them to initiate the fight, George manages to stab Roland in the back after a brief scuffle, killing him almost instantly. When the police arrive at the scene everyone flees, including Marie, who seeks refuge away from the syndicate at a nearby village.
Don Lockwood (Kelly) is a popular silent film star with humble roots as a singer, dancer and stuntman. Don barely tolerates his vapid, shallow leading lady, Lina Lamont (Hagen), though their studio, Monumental Pictures, links them romantically to increase their popularity. Lina herself is convinced they are in love, despite Don's protestations otherwise.
Two young newlyweds from a provincial town, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) and Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste), arrive in Rome for their honeymoon. Wanda is obsessed with the "White Sheik" (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a soap opera photo strip and sneaks off to find him, leaving her conventional, petit bourgeois husband in hysterics as he tries to hide his wife's disappearance from his strait-laced relatives who are waiting to go with them to visit the Pope. The plotline was re-used by Woody Allen in his film To Rome with Love.
The film is the third in director Castellani's "Young Love" trilogy (the first two were Sotto il sole di Roma (1948) and È primavera...(1950)). The story concerns the romance between Carmela (Fiore) and Antonio (Musolino). The ardor is one-sided at first, but Carmela is a determined young woman, willing to scale and conquer any obstacle in pursuing her heart's desire. Once he's "hooked," Antonio scurries from job to job to prove his financial viability. Faced with the hostility of their parents, Carmela and Antonio symbolically shed themselves of all responsibilities to others in a climactic act of stark-naked bravado.
The movie is set in London in 1914, on the eve of World War I (and the year Chaplin made his first film). Calvero (Chaplin), once a famous stage clown but now a washed-up drunk, saves a young dancer, Thereza "Terry" Ambrose, (Claire Bloom), from suicide. Nursing her back to health, Calvero helps Terry regain her self-esteem and resume her dancing career. In doing so he regains his own self-confidence, but his attempts to make a comeback meet with failure. Terry says she wants to marry Calvero despite their age difference, although she has befriended Neville (Sydney Earl Chaplin), a young composer Calvero believes would be better suited to her. In order to give them a chance, Calvero leaves home and becomes a street entertainer. Terry, now starring in her own show, eventually finds Calvero and persuades him to return to the stage for a benefit concert. Reunited with an old partner (Keaton), Calvero gives a triumphant comeback performance. He suffers a heart attack during a routine, however, and dies in the wings while watching Terry, the second act on the bill, dance on stage.
Ruby Corey (Jennifer Jones), a poor backwoods girl living in the small North Carolina town of Braddock, is still in love with Boake Tackman (Charlton Heston). During high school, Ruby had rebuffed his aggressive advances, and was taken in for a couple of years by a kind wealthy businessman and his wife, who protected her and taught her the skills a lady would need. She moved back home when her father needed her help. Boake's family used to be wealthy, but after generations of profligacy all he has left is the land he has had drained and farmed. He starts a relationship with her but plans to marry a local woman with a rich family. When she hears the news, Ruby marries her former benefactor, Mr. Jim Gentry (Karl Malden), whose invalid wife had recently died, despite not loving him.
In 1875 Argentina, a young gaucho kills another man in a duel. His prison sentence is commuted to join the army. He serves under the tough Major Salinas, but soon grows tired of military life and deserts. He becomes Val Verde and leads a band of gauchos to resist the increasing encroachment of railroad agents into the Pampas. In the meantime Salinas quits the army and becomes chief of police, so he can continue his vendetta against him. After falling in love with an aristocratic woman, Martin decides to escape with her to Chile, crossing the Andes on horseback. On the way Teresa tells him that she is pregnant, so they decide to return and get married instead, because of her safety and that for them is inconceivable for the child to be raised without a legitimate last name. When they arrive at the Cathedral, the police follows them so Martin has to escape again, leaving Teresa in the care of Father Fernandez. That night Miguel talks with Teresa about a deal he reached with the Governor, in which Martin voluntarily turns himself in, in exchange for a 3 year prison sentence and a clean slate. Teresa tells Miguel where Martin is hiding, but Salinas also follows, prompting a horse chase through a cattle run, that causes Miguel to fall from his horse and be trampled to death by the herd of cows. That same night, Martin returns filled with guilt to meet Teresa and while she offers to escape to Brazil or Europe, he declines and tells her to meet him at noon at the Cathedral. The next day Father Fernandez arranges a meeting alone with Salinas, where Martin agrees to turn himself in and face the consequences of his actions, as long as he can first marry Teresa as a free man.
The story takes place on February 14, 1895. It is about two gentlemen pretending to be people other than themselves. Interwoven in their story lines are two romance-stricken ladies, each possessing an unusual allegiance to the manliness of the name Ernest. London man-about-town, Jack Worthing, who hides behind the name Ernest is an aristocrat from the country with uncertain lineage. His friend, Algernon Moncrief, is of moderate means and has also created an imaginary character, Bunbury. Algernon's cousin, Gwendolyn Fairfax, has caught the eye of Jack. Jack's ward in the country, Cecily Cardew, has caught the eye of Algernon. Lady Bracknell rules the roost with her heavy-handed social mores.
An Australian "Western" set at some vague time perhaps a century ago. Richard Connor (Peter Lawford) is a desperate young man in Sydney, Australia, trying to find the money to return home. While staying at a boarding house, he is mistaken by the drunk Michael McGuire (Finlay Currie) for his long-lost son, Dennis, whom McGuire had abandoned to an orphanage as a child, a deed for which he now deeply blames himself. Later that night, Connor attempts to rob John Gamble (Richard Boone) outside a gambling house, but after he finds him equally broke, he is talked into assisting him in robbing the establishment, during which the owner is shot. Connor and Gamble make off with the loot, stopping at the boarding house to get Connor's gear, whereupon McGuire, still drunk, pursues his "son" down the street until he collapses. They find on him information on his extensive station (for which he was trying to secure loans in Sydney) and his boat ticket, and decide to pose as his business partners to get on the boat and away to hide out with him in the Outback.
Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn) is a brilliant athlete who loses her confidence whenever her charming but undermining fiancé Collier (William Ching) is around. Ladies golf and tennis championships are within her reach, however she gets flustered by his presence at the contests. He wants her to give up her goal and marry him, but Pat does not give up on herself that easily. She enlists the help of Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy), a slightly shady sports promoter. Together they face mobsters, a jealous boxer (Aldo Ray), and a growing mutual attraction.
In 1890 Paris, as crowds pour into the Moulin Rouge nightclub, young artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec finishes a bottle of cognac and sketches the dancers as they perform. The nightclub's regulars each stop by: singer Jane Avril teases Henri charmingly, dancers La Goulue and Aicha fight, and owner Maurice Joyant offers Henri free drinks for a month in exchange for painting a promotional poster. At closing time, Henri waits for the crowds to disperse before standing to reveal his four-foot six-inch body. As he walks to his Montmartre apartment, he recalls the events that led to his disfigurement. It is learned Lautrec falls down a flight of stairs, where his legs fail to heal due to a genetic weakness resulting from his parents being first cousins. His legs stunted and pained, Henri loses himself in his art, while his father leaves his mother, the countess, to ensure they have no more children. Henri is a bright, happy child, revered by his father, the Count de Toulouse-Lautrec. As a young adult he proposes to the woman he loves, but when she tells him no woman will ever love him, he leaves his childhood home in despair to begin a new life as a painter in Paris.