The Crooked Path

Josephine Darchat lives with her Whipple grandparents in the country and loves Russ Prendergast, son of wealthy Calvin Prendergast, despite the dispute between the families over a spring between their properties.

A young bank clerk wants to marry her, but Nell Fanshawe decides that soda clerk John Stanley is the one for her. Because John does not have enough money to marry, however, Nell encourages him to go to New York, where he becomes a successful antique salesman for Jellaby and Co. Steve Ratling, a vindictive discharged salesman, convinces John to gamble the $300 he took in on a large sale, because he didn't get a deserved raise. After John loses the money, he disappears, leaving a note to Jellaby saying that his pocket was picked, but that he will repay the money.

Gloria Trask, who has risen from a squalid East Side environment to stardom in Costigan's nightclub, is admired by Tom Westcott, detective, and Sam Roberts, a gangster with whom her brother is involved. Andy, threatened by the gang, is forced to pay off, and in a showdown in Gloria's dressing room, Andy shoots Roberts in self-defense. Gloria helps her brother to leave on a South American liner, while Tom forces Roberts' girlfriend Blanche to admit to witnessing the crime. Blanche insists that it was murder, but Tom forces her to admit that Roberts had a gun by accusing her of the killing.

Elderly Spanish nobleman Don Julian is happily married to Teodora, a beautiful young girl, when his protégé, young poet Ernesto, comes to live with them. Vicious gossip spreads false rumors of a love affair between the two young people and the evil Don Alvarez, the most bitter slanderer of all, goads Ernesto into challenging him to a duel. Don Julian, realizing that the youth is no match for one of the best swordsmen in Spain, forces the slanderer into a fight in which Don Alvarez is slain and Don Julian gravely wounded. Ernesto calls upon the dying Don Julian to convince him of his wife's innocence. Misled by his brother Severo, Don Julian believes the youth has come to visit Teodora, denouncing them both before dying, ironically driving Ernesto and Teodora from the house to face the world together.

Disillusioned by the transience of wealth when her father's bank balance can no longer support his family's posh lifestyle, and when her fiancé Clay Wimborn admits that he has gone into debt to shower her with presents, Daphne Kip determines to become financially independent.

Because he had previously picked the name James for his first-born, when a female arrives, Major Milligan, a well-meaning but lazy dreamer, calls his daughter Jamesina, or Jemmy for short. With the birth of her second child, Mrs. Milligan dies, and several years later, when Jemmy is about eighteen, the Major marries a widow with three children. Soon the family is deeply in debt. Jemmy gets work at a textile factory, gets jobs for the other children, and even inspires the Major to work. She falls in love with Stanley Templeton, an aviator on furlough, but because his mother disapproves, Jemmy refuses to marry him. After Stanley returns to the war, Jemmy captures a German spy in the plant who was soaking cloth for airplanes in acid. She receives a reward which allows the Milligans to pay off their mortgage. Mrs. Templeton apologizes, and when Stanley returns, she warmly approves of their engagement.

The backdrop is fifteenth century France, and Charles, Duke of Burgundy has promised his daughter, Princess Mary, that she can marry the man she loves, Prince Maximilian of Styria. But when the Swiss threaten war, the duke is compelled to take back his word and he arranges for Mary to wed the half-witted dauphin of France's King Louis XI .

An innocent man goes to prison for obstruction of justice when his wife refuses to reveal that her father was killed by her mother (and it wasn't suicide). When he is finally released, he meets and becomes involved with a young woman who belongs to the town's influential elite. Once again, he finds himself caught up in intrigue - which eventually leads to his exposing the mayor of the town as corrupt.

Mr. May wants his daughter Diana to marry into society. The man he wishes her to wed is a scientist, Dr. Dimitrius, but Diana is in love with an officer, Commander Cleeve.

The story hinges on the redemption of a country boy, an artist, who has fallen among evil companions, and is an outcast.

Medical intern Robert Morley is distraught after his wife dies in childbirth. He's resentful of his new son and wants nothing to do with him. He leaves the child with his aunt and uncle and heads off to Europe to pursue his medical studies. Morley returns to his hometown six years later, now a successful doctor and engaged to be married to a beautiful socialite. He also feels differently about the boy and attempts to gain custody from his aunt and uncle.

Charm and Valor fall in love and are married. Jealousy, however, is angry at their happiness and decides to ruin their marriage, so she arranges for Charm to find an old photograph of her husband's former sweetheart Forgotten. Valor is also led to mistrust Charm, and the two return to their respective parents: his, Finance and Display, and hers, Commerce and Pride. While Charm spends her days with Sorrow, Treachery endeavors to ruin Valor by luring him to a disreputable roadhouse, and when Valor's father tries to bring him home, the young man strikes his father with a bottle. The two sets of parents are in the midst of a financial battle when Charm gives birth to a child, Happiness. The child reunites the couple, and Madame Jealousy, along with her servants Mischief, Treachery and Rumor, finally are banished.

Young Frank Stratton, the scion of a wealthy family who is temporarily short of funds, has borrowed a valuable bracelet and hasn't returned it to its owner. A crooked detective, Jim Foley, finds the bracelet in Stratton's possession and promises not to arrest him for it in return for Stratton signing a confession that he stole it, which Foley intends to use at a future date. Years pass and a political boss in danger of losing an election asks Foley's help in getting valuable papers from his opponent, Worthington Lawrence. Foley knows that Lawrence is a friend of Stratton and tells Stratton that unless he steals those papers Foley will make his signed confession public. Complications ensue.

Valerie St. Cyr, seizes a chance for excitement and money, deserts her infant daughter Joan and her impoverished husband and runs away to Paris with the Count Du Poissy. Years later, without knowing that they are mother and daughter, both Valerie and Joan fall in love with artist Julian St. Saens, who rejects the former but becomes engaged to the latter. Enraged, Valerie convinces the count to kidnap Joan, but after she is captured, Joan stabs the count to death. When Valerie learns that Joan is her daughter, she takes the blame for the murder and goes to the guillotine while Joan, still unaware that Valerie is her mother, makes plans with Julian for their marriage.

Audrey, an orphan, becomes the ward of a wealthy man, but when he travels to England, she is turned over to an unscrupulous couple who usurp her money and turn her into a slave.

Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.