Imitation of Life

Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."

When the Great War breaks out, brothers Roy and Monte Rutledge, each attending Oxford University, enlist with the Royal Flying Corps.

A young Russian woman marries a wealthy Englishman, and has a daughter with him. After she has an affair with one of his friends, she is forced to leave Britain and moves to Paris. Many years later, her daughter approaches her, needing her help.

Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene Delambre, who tells him that she has just killed her husband, André. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that André invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber during the matter transference.

A woman convicted of fraud aims to take her revenge on the man who put her inside after being released on parole.

Socialite banker Henry Judson maintains his extravagant lifestyle by embezzling from his bank, but is caught by sleazy assistant manager Waters and is blackmailed by him into continuing. Close to being found out, the two devise a scheme which sends Wally, the ex-con boyfriend of pretty hat check girl Rose Abbott, to death row.

Nancy Courtney, a once wealthy socialite, has had to struggle to maintain a facade of prosperity ever since her father's death. Although she loves writer DeWitt Taylor, who is indifferent to amassing a fortune, her mother urges her to marry stockbroker Norman Cravath instead. Nancy acquiesces to her mother's wishes but, despite the fact her new husband does everything he can to please her, she is miserable in her marriage.

Jack and Jerry are doing okay between profession baseball and Vaudeville. That is, until love and gold-diggers get in the way.

The daughter of a senator from South Dakota visits Manhattan for the first time, eager to see the sights of the big city. While there, she finds herself caught up in an affair with a married man, whose wife soon commits suicide. Complications ensue.

Tropical "heat" drives a man into the arms of a disreputable tramp, making things tough for the woman who really loves him.

During Civil War Reconstruction, the Connelly family is romantically restored to their former glory when Will Connelly marries a Yankee farm girl, Joanna Tate, despite the objects of his temperamental father Bob Connelly.