Fred Kohler

After a roustabout sailor avoids being shanghaied in 1850s San Francisco, his audacity helps him rise to a position of power in the vice industry of the infamous Barbary Coast.

Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill go up against Indians and a gunrunner.

Popular monarch Queen Christina of Sweden must choose between love and loyalty to her nation when she unexpectedly falls for a Spanish envoy.

Young Southerners Buck Hineman and Remington Osbury both are in love with the same woman, who promises to marry the one who returns when the Civil War breaks out. On the battlefield, Remington is wounded and left for dead, and Buck returns to marry her. Shortly afterward, Remington returns and contents himself with becoming one of the Hineman family.

Malloy, a young Irish construction engineer just out of college, is assigned to a project and immediately falls in love with the contractor's daughter, Eileen. The contractor's secretary, who also loves the girl, hires Oleson, a Swede, to work with Malloy and delay the building sufficiently to arouse the ire of the contractor. Under these conditions, however, Malloy works all the harder, never looking gloomy or restraining his Irish humor until the Swede comes to blows with him over a strike.

Brandon, a surveyor, dreams of building a railway to the west. He sets off with his son, Davy, to survey a route. They discover a new pass which will shave 200 miles off the expected distance, but they are set upon by a party of Cheyenne. One of them, a white renegade with only two fingers on his right hand, kills Brandon and scalps him. Davy is all alone now.

Anthony Halliday, a brilliant young surgeon, is forced to resign as chief of staff at a New York hospital when he is compelled to delay an appendectomy on the daughter of John Mitchell, a wealthy supporter of the hospital, because of an emergency operation he has to perform. The appendectomy is successful, but later complications cause the girl's death. Carol Andrews, his fiancée, regards him as a failure and leaves him. Halliday, suffering from amnesia brought on by the shocks, drifts to Scranton, Pa., where he gets work in the steel mill. He only remembers who he is when he finds himself bandaging some injured workers. The mill doctor, Miller, asks him to become his assistant. Halliday remains at the mill under the name of John Davis. Because of many accidents at the mill, the smelter boss, Joe Kosovic is demoted. He becomes friendly with Halliday and invites him home for dinner, where he becomes attracted to Gerta, Joe school-teacher daughter.

Joe Lane, radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that the manager of the studio, Arthur Phillips, has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine. Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison for a few years, and when he is released he visits his son, Little Pal, at school and is begged by him to run away together.