Kitty Lorraine has one purpose in life: turning her daughter Shirley into a star. Kitty controls every aspect of the girl's nascent career -- even blackmailing a stage manager so that Shirley can take a more prestigious gig. But Kitty goes too far when she breaks up her daughter's budding relationship with sweet artist Warren Foster. Heartbroken, Shirley sets off on a series of disastrous but profitable relationships.
Helen Chernen pushes her younger sister Katherine into show business in order to escape their small town poverty.
Rose Hovick lives to see her daughter June succeed on Broadway by way of vaudeville. When June marries and leaves, Rose turns her hope and attention to her elder, less obviously talented, daughter Louise. However, having her headlining as a stripper at Minsky's Burlesque is not what she initially has in mind.
Four students come of age during a year at their school, St Marks with various encounters.
An experimental filmmaker takes a job as a driver for a foul-mouthed child actor and his ambitious stage mother.
Stage mother Dolly Murdock (Ann Sothern) uses the attractiveness of her teenage daughter Tricia (Alexandra Hay) for her own economic gains, leading Tricia to experience a nightmarish loss of innocence.
A teenage girl, Jessica, looks back on the stories her mother told through her movies and her own memories of her mother. This film is animated entirely in Oculus Quill, a 3D drawing and sculpting program.
Baba, a preteen from Belleville, Paris, must deal with her mother's determination to turn her into an actress.