When Leonard Vole is arrested for the sensational murder of a rich, middle-aged widow, the famous Sir Wilfrid Robarts agrees to appear on his behalf. Sir Wilfrid, recovering from a near-fatal heart attack, is supposed to be on a diet of bland, civil suits—but the lure of the criminal courts is too much for him, especially when the case is so difficult.
Chad Gates has just been discharged from the Army, and is happy to be back in Hawaii with his surf-board, his beach buddies and his girlfriend.
After her great aunt's death, a high-society woman arrives on a Hawaiian island in search of the heir - the father she has never met.
After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.
Having to leave Melbourne in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals, two song-and-dance men sign on for work as divers. This takes them to an idyllic island on the way to Bali where they vie with each other for the favours of Princess Lala. The hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels which arouses the less romantic interest of some shady locals.
Lt. Robin Crusoe is a navy pilot who bails out of his plane after engine trouble. He reaches a deserted island paradise where he builds a house and begins to adjust to life. He is in for trouble however when a local girl is banished to the island by her father, who then comes after Crusoe.
Carlo Cofield vacations to Southern California, where he quickly becomes immersed in the easy-going local culture, getting entangled in two beachside romances.
A treasury agent on the trail of counterfeit money confides to fellow ocean liner passenger, Charlie Chan, that there have been two attempts on his life.
Three merchant seamen fleeing the Japanese take refuge on a Pacific island, where they come across a doctor and his daughter who take care of the natives, a hostile tribe that wants to kill the sailors for trespassing on their sacred ground.
Conceited singer Garry Mitchell refuses to renew his radio contract, so agent Doug Blake decides to find a new personality to replace him. In New York, he finds Martha Gibson, a single mother with a great voice. He arranges for her to move to Hollywood, but then has a problem trying to sell her to the show's sponsor. Doug tries every trick he can think of to make Martha a star, and as the two work more closely, he falls in love with her. Complicating matters further, Martha meets and becomes attracted to Garry.
A woman travels to Hawaii to find out if a man in prison there is actually her missing husband.
Organist Korla Pandit was an alluring enigma, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. He never spoke a word on 900 episodes of his groundbreaking 1950s TV program but captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives with his soulful, hypnotic gaze and theatrical performance of popular tunes and East Indian compositions on the newly developed Hammond B3 organ. In the ’90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados and ended up immortalized in the film Ed Wood. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998—one that is finally revealed in KORLA.
A young South Seas native boy is sent to the U.S. for his education and returns to his island after his father dies to try to stop a revolution.