Accused of stealing horses, drifter Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) finds himself before the infamous Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan). Harden saves himself from hanging by pretending that he’s intimately acquainted with actress Lily Langtry, whom Bean worships from afar.
Catherine Sloper, a shy, plain and boring young woman, falls for a poor but handsome and well-bred man, Morris Townsend who her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.
The life of comedienne Fanny Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, to the height of her career with the Ziegfeld Follies, including her marriage to and eventual divorce from Nick Arnstein.