J. Pierpont Finch buys a book, How to Succeed in Business, describing in step-by-step fashion how to rise in the business world. The ambitious young window cleaner follows its advice carefully. He joins the "World-Wide Wicket Company" and begins work in the mailroom. Soon, thanks to the ethically-questionable advice in the book, he rises to Vice-President in Charge of Advertising, making sure that each person above him gets either fired or moved or transferred within the company.
A Baker and his Wife wish for a child but suffer under a curse laid upon the Baker's family by a Witch who found the Baker's father robbing her garden when his mother was pregnant. The Baker's father also stole some beans which caused the Witch's mother to punish her with the curse of ugliness. The Witch offers to lift the curse, but only if the Baker and his Wife obtain four critical items for her: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold.
Upholsterer's assistant Irene O'Dare meets wealthy Don Marshall while she is measuring chairs for Mrs. Herman Vincent at her Long Island estate. Charmed by the young girl, Don anonymously purchases Madame Lucy's, an exclusive Manhattan boutique, and instructs newly hired manager Mr. Smith to offer Irene a job as a model. She soon catches the eye of socialite Bob Vincent, whose mother is hosting a ball at the family mansion. In order to promote Madame Lucy's dress line, Mr. Smith arranges for his models to be invited to the soiree.
Irma la Douce ["Irma the Sweet"] tells the story of Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), an honest cop, who after being transferred from the park Bois de Boulogne to a more urban neighborhood in Paris, finds a street full of prostitutes working at the Hotel Casanova and proceeds to raid the place. The police inspector, who is Nestor's superior, and the other policemen, have been aware of the prostitution, but tolerate it in exchange for bribes. The inspector, a client of the prostitutes himself, fires Nestor, who is accidentally framed for bribery.
The film opens in a puppet theater, where three audience members—a military officer, a taxi driver, and a woman on a shopping trip—discover they are being depicted as marionette caricatures against a backdrop of newsreel footage from the 1920s through the 1950s. They find themselves trapped backstage amidst bizarre circumstances ... the puppet master is found dead above the stage, a gigantic plaster hand drops from the ceiling to the floor, and a deafening siren blares endlessly. The trio escapes from the theater to a beach, where the military officer locates the siren and kicks it, causing it to blow up.
In 1951, in Belleville, New Jersey, Tommy DeVito, narrating the story, introduces the audience to himself, Tommy's brother Nicky, and their friend Nick Massi, who perform together as The Variety Trio, and to a barber's son, 16-year-old Frankie Castelluccio, already well known in the neighborhood for his singing voice. Frankie has the admiration of Genovese Family mobster Angelo "Gyp" DeCarlo, who takes a personal interest in him.
The film is framed as a group of performers who travel to the desert to re-enact the Passion of Christ. The film begins with them arriving on a bus, assembling their props, and getting into costume. One of the group (Neeley) is surrounded by the others, puts on a white robe, and emerges as Jesus Christ.
Samuel "Sam" Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is the successful, self-made and unsophisticated head of Dodsworth Motor Company, an American automobile parts manufacturing firm, based in the small Midwestern town of Zenith (also the setting for Lewis' Babbitt). His wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton), feeling trapped by the boring social life of their small-town existence, convinces her spouse to sell his interest in the company and take her to Europe. Sam disregards the warning of Tubby Pearson, his banker and friend, that men like them are only happy when they are working.
À la fin des années 1960, la star du Magicien d’Oz Judy Garland s’apprête à donner une série de concerts à Londres. Mais sa voix s’est fragilisée au fil du temps et Judy souffre, fragilisée par une vie entièrement consacrée à Hollywood et à sa carrière.
In old Baghdad, an impoverished poet goes to the marketplace to sell his rhymes for food. Because the Poet has set up shop in a spot usually reserved for a man named Hajj, some men kidnap the Poet and take him to the desert tent of Jawan, an elderly thief. Jawan, assuming that the Poet is Hajj, orders him to reverse the curse Hajj put on him fifteen years ago, which led to the kidnapping of Jawan's beloved son. The Poet asks for one hundred gold pieces to reverse the curse; Jawan agrees, and returns to Baghdad to look for his son.
Cervantes and his manservant have been imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, and a manuscript by Cervantes is seized by his fellow inmates, who subject him to a mock trial in order to determine whether the manuscript should be returned. Cervantes' defense is in the form of a play, in which Cervantes takes the role of Alonso Quijana, an old gentleman who has lost his mind and now believes that he should go forth as a knight-errant. Quijano renames himself Don Quixote de La Mancha, and sets out to find adventures with his "squire", Sancho Panza.
Macheath aka "Mack the Knife" ("Mackie Messer" in German) is presented as an antihero and is in league with Tiger Brown, Chief of Police, who is about to oversee the coronation of an unspecified queen.
The setting is San Francisco; Joey Evans (Frank Sinatra) is a second-rate singer, a heel known for his womanizing ways (calling women "mice"), but charming and funny. When Joey meets Linda English (Kim Novak), a naive chorus girl, he has stirrings of real feelings. However, that does not stop him from romancing a former flame and ex-stripper (Joey says, "She used to be 'Vera...with the Vanishing Veils'"), now society matron Vera Prentice-Simpson (Rita Hayworth), a wealthy, willful, and lonely widow, in order to convince her to finance his dream, "Chez Joey", a night club of his own.
Ed Earl (Reynolds), the sheriff of Gilbert, Texas, has a relationship of long standing with Miss Mona (Parton), who runs a brothel there called the "Chicken Coop." Illegal or not, Ed Earl doesn't interfere with her business, which has been a fixture in the town for as long as either can remember.
May Daly, une danseuse, est aimée par deux hommes : Louis Blore et Alec Howe. Par rivalité, Louis verse une drogue dans le verre d'Alec, mais par erreur il boit lui-même le verre. Louis rêve alors qu'il est Louis XV et retrouve May en Madame du Barry.