The Fallen Idol (1948)

A roustabout joins a traveling carny and schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband.

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.

TV cameraman Harry Hinkle is injured while filming a football game. Seeing big dollar signs, his unscrupulous ambulance-chasing lawyer brother-in-law Willie Gingrich enters the picture, and convinces Harry to overstate his injuries and claim $1 million in pain and suffering. Harry's similarly-minded ex-wife suddenly reappears in an attempt to rekindle their relationship.

A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.

A young couple's suicide pact goes awry, leaving the woman to face her survival with a new admirer while pining for her lost love.

A football player-turned-convict organizes a team of inmates to play against a team of prison guards. His dilemma is that the warden asks him to throw the game in return for an early release, but he is also concerned about the inmates' lack of self-esteem.

An armored-car guard must join a robbery after being caught with his ex-wife by her gangster husband.

Chamaco finds himself on the wrong end of a firing squad after tracking an ex-Confederate to interrogate him about General Beauregard's missing gold. He's saved by a stranger who calls himself Stuart Byrnes. Stuart claims to know the location of Beauregard's strongbox, and so Chamaco takes him to Blake's camp. After a sort of initiation by the gang, Stuart leads Blake's men back across the border to Durango to retrieve the gold.

During a trip to Denmark, a man is arrested and accused of murdering his wife and three children. Though maintaining his innocence, he remains jailed as police investigate.