F. Hugh Herbert

Mystery writer Marian Carstairs is hard at work trying to finish her latest novel. Her three children meanwhile are entertaining themselves by trying to solve a murder in their own neighborhood. In between gathering clues, the kids play matchmaker by trying to fix up their widowed mom with the handsome detective investigating the case.

Anne Crandall is the mayor of a small town in Vermont. Her deceased husband had been the mayor for years and when he died, she was left to carry on and to raise his daughter from his first marriage. She lives with the daughter, her father-in-law and a housekeeper. In the town square, there was a statue of her late husband and every year since his death, they have an anniversary celebration there. This year during a thunderstorm, the statue is hit by lightning and the head falls off. The daughter insists that a new statue be erected instead of patching the old one. Mayor Crandall is sent to New York to interview the prospective sculptor, George Corday.

A man is convicted of killing his boss, whom he suspected of having an affair with his wife. On board the train taking him to prison for his execution are a reporter, who is dying of lung cancer and wants to interview the condemned man--and who also has some inside knowledge of the circumstances of the man's case. Also aboard is the prisoner's wife, who doesn't believe her husband is a killer and desperately wants to talk to him about it but he refuses to speak to her.

Tacey and Harry King are a suburban couple with three sons and a serious need of a babysitter. Tacey puts an ad in the paper for a live-in babysitter, and the ad is answered by Lynn Belvedere. But when she arrives, she turns out to be a man. And not just any man, but a most eccentric, outrageously forthright genius with seemingly a million careers and experiences behind him.

When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker. Politics is in the air however. It's just prior to the civil war and there is already a sharp division in the Territory as to whether it will remain slave-free. When he gets the opportunity to run for marshal, Seton finds himself running against the respected local schoolteacher, William Cantrell. Not is what it seems however. While acting as the upstanding citizen in public, Cantrell is dangerously ambitious and is prepared to do anything to make his mark, and his fortune, on the Territory. When he loses the race for marshal, he forms a group of raiders who run guns into the territory and rob and terrorize settlers throughout the territory. Eventually donning Confederate uniforms, it is left to Seton and the good citizens of Lawrence to face Cantrell and his raiders in one final clash.

In early 19th century England, ambitious and ruthless orphan Rebecca Sharp advances from the position of governess to the heights of British society.

Janet Blake leaves a party when her boss drunkenly makes passes at her and is offered a ride to the subway with Bill Tremaine. When she thinks Bill is making advances too, she flees into a rainstorm and ends up at the house of his neighbor, retired actor Preston Mitchell. Preston hires her as his secretary, and soon both men are pursuing Janet.

Film adaptation of the Broadway hit, about the comic mayhem that erupts in a small town when a 15-year old high-schooler (Shirley Temple) is wrongly suspected of being pregnant.