Helen Twelvetrees

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.

Pals Pat Rogers and Slag Bailey try to collect a debt from Slag's recently deceased boxing promoter but wind up collecting his child, instead, and raising him as their own son.

During a stick-up, a woman is excited by the criminal and joins him on his crime spree.

While filming a western on location, the stand-in/stunt double for an egotistical cowboy movie star proves his heroics when a "fake" bank robbery turns out to be the real thing.

Joan (Helen Twelvetrees) is a Canadian, adopted by Ma Dawson (Nellie Ferguson), a struggling horse breeder and trainer. Joan thinks "legs don't make a race horse, it's blood", and so she buys an unwanted thoroughbred colt called Stormalong. Helped by Ma's son Tommy Dawson (Frank Leighton), Joan restores the horse to health and fitness, and soon enough the horse is winning race after race, becoming a favourite for the Melbourne Cup.

Ellery Queen's vacation is interrupted when murder strikes next door to his oceanside cabin.

A young Iowa woman inherits her late estranged father's New York business, but the dead man's crooked associates think they can outwit the naive heir and seize control.

Esmeralda is a cook in a diner in a small Arkansas town. When a gang of crooks moves into town and plots a bank robbery, Esmeralda unintentionally wrecks their plans, resulting in fame for Esmeralda as the crime-fighting "Tiger Woman," but also further complications.

As California gubernatorial candidate Burton is about to cast his vote a truck crashes into the polling booth, critically injuring him and his opponent. A flashback traces his career from unemployed veteran to dockworker to lawyer. A side thread traces his tortured relationship with his wife.

A two-bit gambler somehow claws his way to the top. His love for riches is only matched by his love for his wife, but he is sometimes confused by which he loves most.