Terry Malloy dreams about being a prize fighter, while tending his pigeons and running errands at the docks for Johnny Friendly, the corrupt boss of the dockers union. Terry witnesses a murder by two of Johnny's thugs, and later meets the dead man's sister and feels responsible for his death. She introduces him to Father Barry, who tries to force him to provide information for the courts that will smash the dock racketeers.
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after femme fatale Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club—Holiday Inn—is the setting for the chase by Hanover and manager Danny Reed. The music's the thing.
The relationship between Sergeant Stryker and a group of rebellious recruits is made difficult by the Sergeant's tough training tactics. At Tarawa, the leathernecks have a chance to see Stryker in action, and begin to appreciate him.
When Charlie Brown complains about the overwhelming materialism that he sees amongst everyone during the Christmas season, Lucy suggests that he become director of the school Christmas pageant. Charlie Brown accepts, but is a frustrating struggle. When an attempt to restore the proper spirit with a forlorn little fir Christmas tree fails, he needs Linus' help to learn the meaning of Christmas.
Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. At the brink of attaining his career goals, he is forced to choose between business success, married to the beautiful, but unfaithful Mary and starting over with his true love, the much younger Natalie.
The first manned spacecraft, fired from an English launchpad, is first lost from radar, then roars back to Earth and crashes in a farmer's field, and is found to contain only one of the three men who took off in it; and he is unable to talk but appears to be undergoing a torturous physical and mental metamorphosis.
Russian exiles in Paris plot to collect ten million pounds from the Bank of England by grooming a destitute, suicidal girl to pose as heir to the Russian throne. While Bounin is coaching her, he comes to believe that she is really Anastasia. In the end, the Empress must decide her claim.
The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.
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.
