In New York, the interior decorator Jan Morrow and the wolf composer Brad Allen share a party line, but Brad keeps it busy most of the time flirting with his girlfriends. They do not know each other but Jan hates Brads since she needs the telephone for her business and can not use it. Coincidently Jan's wealthy client Jonathan Forbes that woos her is the best friend of Brad and he comments with him that he feels an unrequited love for Jan, who is a gorgeous woman. When Brad meets Jan by chance in a restaurant, he poses as a naive tourist from Texas named Rex Stetson and seduces her. But Jonathan hires a private eye to find who Rex Stetson is.

Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean when he fails to meet her at the railway station. She goes off to Paris alone. A year later, mistress of wealthy Pierre Revel, she meets Jean again. Misinterpreting events she bounces back and forth between apparent security and true love.

At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, sideshow barker Flo Ziegfeld turns the tables on his more successful neighbor Billings, and steals his girlfriend to boot. This pattern is repeated throughout their lives, as Ziegfeld makes and loses many fortunes putting on ever bigger, more spectacular shows (sections of which appear in the film). French revue star Anna Held becomes his first wife, but it's not easy being married to the man who "glorified the American girl." Late in life, now married to Billie Burke, he seems to be all washed up, but...

A simple-minded circus strongman, John Sikes, has been wrongly accused of a crime committed by Wilken. On the run with his infant son, he enters an affluent house and seeks help from Ann, but is taken captive and imprisoned. Fourteen years pass. Ann has married Dr. Richard West. John, a broken man, is released early for good behaviour. He goes to find his son Robert at the orphanage, but the boy was adopted years before. A flashback shows the baby being adopted by Ann. "Slim" Sam Morton runs a ring of thieves specializing in dog-napping. John knows one of them from prison. One of the gang sells a dog to Dr. West. He also steals the keys to West's country house, The Lindens. The thieves burgle the house. In the sack of loot, John finds a box belonging to Ann, the woman he believes betrayed him years before...

The classic stage hit gets the Hollywood treatment in the story of Elwood P. Dowd who makes friends with a spirit taking the form of a human-sized rabbit named Harvey that only he sees (and a few privileged others on occasion also.) After his sister tries to commit him to a mental institution, a comedy of errors ensues. Elwood and Harvey become the catalysts for a family mending its wounds and for romance blossoming in unexpected places.