George F. Marion

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.

A mining engineer teams up with a crusty deputy sheriff to solve the mystery killings at an old mine where the owner's family waits for him to die, and where a valuable radium strike may have been made.

While a distinguished astronomer is giving a lecture in a planetarium, a shot rings out and one of the audience members is found dead. A tough detective and a brassy female reporter lock horns as they both try to break the case.

Opera prima donna leaves the Metropolitan to form her own company with Tibbett as leading man. She leaves this company too which means Tibbett and company must carry on without her.

A gangster's girlfriend on the run from the police, who suspect her of helping her boyfriend commit a robbery, holes up in a waterfront bar. She stows away on a fishing boat headed out to sea, and winds up falling in love with and marrying one of the fishermen, but doesn't tell him about her past. However, a year after they're married and have a child, her ex-boyfriend gets out of jail and comes looking for her.

A camp butcher on an Albany night boat dreams of the South Seas.

The victim of a political assassination is brought back to life by a scientific experiment. However, the effects only last for six hours, and he must find his killer in that time.

Ivy Stevens is a cafe entertainer in love with a shifty salesman who deserts her. In attempting to commit suicide, she is saved by Carl, a Salvation Army officer. Encouraged by Carl, Ivy joins the Salvation Army. When her old flame re-enters her life, Ivy finds she is still attracted and begins another affair with him.

Two fast-talking insurance salesmen meet Mary, who is running away from her wealthy mother, and they agree to help her run a hotel that she owns. When they find out that the hotel is run down and nearly abandoned, they launch a phony PR campaign that presents the hotel as a resort favored by the rich. Their advertising succeeds too well, and many complications soon arise.

Old sailor Chris Christofferson eagerly awaits the arrival of his grown daughter Anna, whom he sent at five years old to live with relatives in Minnesota. He has not seen her since, but believes her to be a decent and respectably employed young woman. When Anna arrives, however, it is clear that she has lived a hard life in the dregs of society, and that much of spirit has been extinguished. She falls in love with a young sailor rescued at sea by her father, but dreads to reveal to him the truth of her past. Both father and young man are deluded about her background, yet Anna cannot quite bring herself to allow them to remain deluded.