The Plot Thickens

A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

An Episcopal Bishop, Henry Brougham, has been working for months on the plans for an elaborate new cathedral which he hopes will be paid for primarily by a wealthy, stubborn widow. He is losing sight of his family and of why he became a churchman in the first place. Enter Dudley, an angel sent to help him. Dudley does help everyone he meets, but not necessarily in the way they would have preferred. With the exception of Henry, everyone loves him, but Henry begins to believe that Dudley is there to replace him, both at work and in his family's affections, as Christmas approaches.

As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement.

An average television repairman must care for the newborn triplets of his former hometown sweetheart—now a famous movie star—so her career will not suffer.

Boxer Joe Pendleton, flying to his next fight, crashes...because a Heavenly Messenger, new on the job, snatched Joe's spirit prematurely from his body. Before the matter can be rectified, Joe's body is cremated; so the celestial Mr. Jordan grants him the use of the body of wealthy Bruce Farnsworth, who's just been murdered by his wife. Joe tries to remake Farnsworth's unworthy life in his own clean-cut image, but then falls in love; and what about that murderous wife?

ZaSu Pitts and Slim Summerville meet when both are sold deeds to an abandoned ranch in the California desert. Their lonely lives become much more crowded when a drifter discovers gold on the property—though all he’s found is Slim’s missing filling. (adapted from MoMA capsule)

Radio singer Glory Eden is publicized as the ideal of American womanhood in order to sell the sponsor's product Ippsie-Wippsie Washcloths. In reality, Glory would like to at least sample booze, jazz, gambling, and men. When the strain of representing "purity" brings her to rebellion, the sponsor and his nutty henchmen pick her a public-relations "sweetheart" from fan mail, who turns out to be a hayseed.

Prep football star Jimmy Howal gets a reception far different from what he expected when he enters West Point.

A straitlaced turn-of-the-century father presides over a family of boys and the mother who really rules the roost.

A housewife's sudden rise to fame as a soap spokesperson leads to chaos in her home life.

During World War II, a junior American Army officer, Lt. Peter Stirling, gets sent to the psychiatric ward whenever he insists that an Army mule named Francis speaks to him.

When the body of Violet Feverel is discovered on the Central Park bridle path, Inspector Oscar Piper presumes her death was accidental, until his friend, amateur detective Hildegarde Withers, locates Violet’s horse and discovers it is streaked with blood.

A drunken college student invites a dance hostess to the big college dance and then forgets he asked her. When she shows up at school, he tries to get rid of her, but she won't leave. Instead, she stays and shows up both him and his classmates' snooty dates.

A shy office worker becomes a hero when a fortune teller calls him another Napoleon.

A juror at a murder trial is convinced the defendant is innocent.

In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City.

A simple Connecticut farm girl is recruited by a distant relative, an aristocratic patroon, to be governess to his young daughter in his Hudson Valley mansion.

When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.

A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.

A sideshow bally girl sets out to seduce the naive son of the show's manager to get even with him for a friend that he jilted.

After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.

As a penalty for fighting fellow classmates days before graduating from West Point, J.E.B. Stuart, George Armstrong Custer and four friends are assigned to the 2nd Cavalry, stationed at Fort Leavenworth. While there they aid in the capture and execution of the abolitionist, John Brown following the Battle of Harper's Ferry.

A struggling writer divorces his wife to pursue his career without interference, but they meet in Europe years later after she has remarried.

In this dramatized account of his early law career in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is born into a modest log cabin, where he is encouraged by his first love, Ann Rutledge, to pursue law. Following her tragic death, Lincoln establishes a law practice in Springfield, where he meets a young Mary Todd. Lincoln's law skills are put to the test when he takes on the difficult task of defending two brothers who have been accused of murder.

Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the Mohawk River Valley, but soon their growing prosperity and happiness are threatened by the sinister sound of drums that announce dark times of revolution and war.

The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them. But violence descends on Ellen's household willy-nilly when the U.S. President passes through town... and slightly psycho hired assassin John Baron finds the Benson home ideal for an ambush.

When Edward Creighton leads the construction of the Western Union to unite East with West, he hires a Western reformed outlaw and a tenderfoot Eastern surveyor. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 2000.

Huckleberry Finn, a rambunctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River.

In the days leading up to the Russian Revolution, Stephen Locke, a minor British diplomat in St Petersburg, falls in love with a Russian spy.

A young French soldier in World War I is overcome with guilt when he kills a German soldier who, like himself, is a musically gifted conscript, each having attended the same musical conservatory in France. The fact that the incident occurred in war does not assuage his guilt. He travels to Germany to meet the man's family.

Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a group of less scrupulous construction workers sabotages the entire operation in the hopes that they can get their tracks laid first and get the money from the railroad.

The story of legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne.

A politically charged story about a man who dabbles in crime, with disastrous results, to gain the capital he needs to purchase a school where immigrants are prepared for American citizenship. The school's European teacher dreams of a fascist America. Based on a story by Nathanael West and Samuel Ornitz, who was one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

A lawyer changes from defending public enemies to bringing them to justice after his brother is killed.

Ignored by his ever-busy wife and children, a middle-aged businessman finds companionship with a former female employee.

Rev. Chris Saunders becomes entangled in a moral and legal crisis when he hears a confession that could exonerate a young man wrongly convicted of murder.

Late one night, secretary Paula Young (Ann Harding) leaves the office of her boss, Stanley Whittaker (Douglas Dumbrille, locking the door and taking the stairs to avoid being seen by the elevator operator (Frank Jenks). The next morning, the cleaning lady finds Whittaker's dead body, an apparent suicide. Police Lieutenant Poole (Moroni Olsen) finds a letter signed by Whittaker in which the deceased states he embezzled $75,000. Soon, however, he suspects otherwise and, after investigating, arrests widower James "Jim" Trent (Walter Abel), the vice president of Whittaker.

A conscientious attorney who is a member of the State Parole Board, finds his own son, using an alias, up for parole and makes the decision to cast the approving vote.

A Navy pilot gets involved in a romantic triangle while stationed in Hawaii.

When a grand jury acquits a gangster accused of murder, a retired elderly citizen decides it's up to him to see that the criminal is proven guilty and put behind bars.

A truck driver races a train to the West Coast in an attempt to determine which method of transportation is faster.