Southampton, 10 avril 1912. Le paquebot le plus grand et le plus moderne du monde, réputé pour son insubmersibilité, le « Titanic », appareille pour son premier voyage. Quatre jours plus tard, il heurte un iceberg. À son bord, un artiste pauvre et une grande bourgeoise tombent amoureux.
D'un côté, Louis Winthorpe III, un jeune directeur, est chargé des investissements chez Duke & Duke, une puissante banque de Philadelphie. De l'autre, Billy Ray Valentine est un noir combinard mais fauché. Tous deux vont faire l'objet d'un pari insensé, passé entre les patrons de Louis.
Dean est un charpentier veuf menant une vie simple avec ses 4 enfants. À la demande de Joanna Stayton, une milliardaire capricieuse vivant sur un yacht, il construit un placard en chêne pour ses innombrables paires de chaussures. Mais la riche cliente refuse de le payer en prétextant que le placard aurait dû être fabriqué en cèdre, et l'envoie à l'eau avec ses outils. Lorsque Dean apprend plus tard que Joanna est elle-même tombée à l'eau en cherchant sa bague et est depuis lors tombée amnésique, il décide de se faire passer pour son mari et de la faire s'occuper de ses enfants pendant un mois en compensation de l'argent qu'il aurait dû toucher...
Après avoir fait fortune, le vieux Vanderhof est devenu un sage en pensant que l'argent ne fait pas le bonheur. Il vit entouré de ses petits-enfants et de ses domestiques, pour le moins originaux. Mais voila que sa petite-fille Alice tombe amoureuse de Tony Kirby, le fils d'un homme d'affaires. Si Alice et Tony s'aiment, ce n'est pas le cas des Vanderhof et des Kirby, qui n'ont pas réellement la même conception de la vie.
The snooty Fernanda decides to leave Spain to visit her uncle in San Francisco in order to escape the attentions of the dandy, amorous Don Diego, but he follows her. She is rescued from a wild taxi ride by a passerby who owns a huge plumbing company. Believing him to be a common plumber, she snubs him, but he pursues her and a romantic rivalry is born.
A society girl tries to make a go of her marriage to an archaeologist.
On a yacht sailing from Shanghai to the United States, the sailors, led by the megalomaniac steward, revolt and take control.
A murder trial reunites a former chorus girl and her son, a grandson of an English aristocrat.
Generational saga tracing the events in the lives of the midwest pioneering Nordholm family, as seen through the eyes of businessman Orin Nordholm Jr., who ages from a youth to an elderly grandfather.
Socialite, privileged, Jane Dale and lawyer Bill Shevlin meet in an automobile accident at night, on a dirt road, in a storm, near a hick town which fleeces travelers through corrupt law enforcement.
When an open-hearted folk man, a butcher of the profession, buys an apartment to stay with his family in a block of flats in a lush neighborhood, the tenants are colluding in order to get him away. The only defenders are the concierge and a general who will think of a clever way to correct the situation.
Two different worlds collide: the wealthy influential people on the one hand and the poor and honest on the other hand. Sin, a wealthy boy had been spoiled by his parents and has never realized the importance of self-dependence and how to become a responsible man. The boy lives his life relying on his parent's wealth and power, making him even more arrogant and pompous. Lud, a mute middle-aged man came from a rural area to be a motorcycle mechanic in Vientiane. His wife worked as a market woman and they had a six-year-old daughter. Though Luds life was simple, his family was warm and loving. One day Lud unexpectedly faces the greatest loss of his life caused by Sin.