Julius J. Epstein

After former studio head Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) is told he is too old to be a producer, he receives word that his 20-year-old daughter, January (Deborah Raffin), is about to undergo her fifth surgery. Mike flies to Switzerland, but is told that he will be a distraction during her recovery and to go home. Meanwhile, as January is anesthetized, she remembers two years earlier when she suspected her father of having an affair with his leading lady. Hoping to catch Mike in the act, January and her date raced on a motorcycle toward the hotel, only to crash into a stone wall. In the present, Mike flies to Italy, where he woos a wealthy widow, Deidre Milford Granger (Alexis Smith). Months later, Mike welcomes a healed January to New York City with champagne and a personal message in lights on the side of the Goodyear blimp. That night, January is unable to sleep, and she awakes to find Mike sneaking Deidre into the suite. He informs January that Deidre and he are married, and explains he married her so he could keep January living in luxury style. When January asks what Deidre gets out of it, Mike claims he dresses up her table. The next day, Mike is playing backgammon with Deidre's younger cousin, David Milford (George Hamilton), when January returns from shopping. After introductions, Mike informs January that her old school friend, Linda Riggs (Brenda Vaccaro), called. January visits her friend and does not recognize her. Linda brags about how much plastic surgery she has undergone and how she slept her way to being the youngest editor of Gloss magazine. Later that night, after dancing and drinking, David propositions January, but she turns him down. The next day, Linda is flabbergasted to hear that her friend rejected David until January admits she is still a virgin. Insisting that January has "daddy issues", Linda convinces her to move out on her own and hires her to work at Gloss. A few days later, Deidre is outraged to learn that David is dating Karla (Melina Mercouri), an aging Greek actress, and that January is moving out. When Mike stands up for January, Deidre emasculates him by reminding him he is a kept man. Hoping to please Deidre, January goes to David's apartment and they make love. Later, David is disturbed to realize he took January's virginity. On the ride home, January tells him that although she likes David, she does not want a relationship. The next day, Deidre travels to another apartment building where it's revealed that she is having a lesbian tryst with Karla. After making love, Deidre tells Karla about the fight with Mike and mentions she put $3 million in a trust fund for January. Afterward, Deidre meets Mike, January and Linda for drinks. They are interrupted when Tom Colt (David Janssen), a middle-aged, alcoholic famous writer, staggers to the table and demands to fight Mike for making a lousy movie out of his book, but Mike declines the offer. Later, when Tom and his friend, Hugh Richardson (Gary Conway), offer to buy January and Linda a drink, Linda invites them to her apartment. Hugh leaves, but Tom is game. At the apartment, January excuses herself so Linda and Tom can be alone. As Linda slips into her lingerie, Tom sneaks out the fire escape and goes to Januarys, where he apologizes for treating Mike so rudely. January kisses him, and tells him to call her when he is sober. Hours later, he calls to say he is sober. January and Tom begin dating. One night, she goes to Tom's hotel and realizes it is the same suite her father always rented when she came home from boarding school. She tries to seduce Tom, but he wants to wait until they are not in the room that January was raised in. Later, when January tells Mike about Tom, he begs her not to date older men like himself and reminds her that Tom is married with a six-month old baby. January goes to Linda for advice, who theorizes that January's hang ups are due to her oedipal cravings and suggests she sleep with Mike to get it out of her system. That weekend, Tom and January visit the Hamptons and, after they make love, Tom confesses he has been impotent for years and his wife was impregnated by artificial insemination. Tom explains his wife and he have their freedom, as long as they are discrete. The next morning, Tom gets an offer to go to Hollywood, California to adapt one of his books into a screenplay. He asks January to accompany him, but she has promised Mike she would go with him to Palm Beach, Florida. Tom talks her into telling Mike she is writing a story on Tom, and has to go to the west coast. A few days later, Mike arrives in California to find Tom and January in bed. Mike beats up Tom, and gives January 30 minutes to pack; but Tom tells January that, if she goes, she can never come back. Mike returns to Palm Beach alone and asks Deidre for a divorce, explaining that when he married her, he lost his daughter. Deidre complains she will be all alone, but Mike notes that she has Karla and that he is returning January's trust fund money to her. The two decide to split on friendly terms and board a plane to New York, however, the plane crashes (off-camera) killing both of them. After the funeral, January learns Tom is in New York. She finds him in a bar, where he explains he is breaking up with January because he is old and regrets getting between her and her father. Tom acknowledges they had something special once, but January pleads that once is not enough. Tom asks her to leave. January returns to her apartment and finds Linda in hysterics because, after sleeping with her boss, he fired her. January calms her down and gets her to bed, then wanders the New York City streets all night, thinking of Tom and Mike. In the final shot, January sits down on a bench and watches the dawn as it slowly rises over the George Washington Bridge, aware that this will be a brand new and hope-full new day.

When a hypochondriac believes he is dying, he makes plans for his wife--which she discovers and misunderstands. At one of his many visits to his doctor, hypochondriac George Kimball mistakes a dying man's diagnosis for his own and believes that he only has about two more weeks to live. Wanting to take care of his wife Judy, he doesn't tell her and tries to find her a new husband. When he finally does tell her, she quickly finds out he's not dying at all (while he doesn't), and she believes it's just a lame excuse to hide an affair, so she decides to leave him. —Leon Wolters <wolters@strw.LeidenUniv.nl> Judy Kimball quietly humors her husband George's chronic hypochondria. On his latest visit to his GP, he is told he's one of the doctor's healthiest patients. But when George overhears Dr. Morrissey talking to George's cardiologist about another patient's terminal heart problem, George assumes they're talking about him. He doesn't plan to tell Judy the news, but decides to use his remaining time to find her a replacement husband. —Huggo

The life of the youngest of three sisters in a musical family is complicated by the separate arrivals of a charming composer and a cynical music arranger. When Alex enters the lives of the musical Tuttle family, all three daughters fall for him. He is charming, good-looking, and personable. Laurie and Alex seem to be made for each other, and they become engaged. When Barney comes into the picture to help Alex with some musical arrangements, matters become complicated. Laurie sees him as a challenge; she can't believe anyone could be as cynical as he is, and she is more than a match for his gloomy outlook on life. —Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.com> Gregory Tuttle is the Dean of a music foundation in a coastal town in Connecticut. He has passed on his love of music to his three young-adult daughters Amy, Fran, and Laurie, who live with him and his spinster sister, the girls' Aunt Jessie. Gregory and his daughters often rehearse together as a musical quartet. The girls support one another however they can, but each is an individual with her own distinct personality and wants, including ideal-husband wishlists. After only seven dates, Fran becomes engaged to developer Bob Neary, a man with prospects and wealth aspirations which match Fran's own. After Fran and Bob's announcement, Laurie and Amy vow to be spinster sisters together, despite practical but deep-in-her-heart romantic Amy's long courtship by unassuming plumber Ernie Nichols, who dotes on her. Only fun-loving Laurie truly believes that she will never marry. Their collective lives change with the entry into their lives of two men. The first is Gregory's old friend's son, composer Alex Burke, who is in the process of writing the songs and incidental music for a Broadway musical. He easily gets a job at the foundation using his natural and sincere charm which he applies to all equally, those charms which he also uses to get temporary lodging at the Tuttle home while he spends most of his time writing. Many women misconstrue that charm for romantic interest. The second is Alex's orchestrator and arranger, Barney Sloan. Barney has a chip on his shoulders about what life has dealt him, which he uses in turn as a reason for living a reckless life. The two men make each of the three daughters re-examine what she thinks she wants in life, or more precisely who she wants, which for all may be the same person, and affects what all three end up doing in their romantic lives. —Huggo

Paris, France. After the success of his first book, famous American writer Charles Wills (Van Johnson) returns to Paris, and visits a local cafe named Café Dhingo where he chats with the bartender about his life. Charles flashes back to his past.... August 1944. Shortly after the liberation of Paris from the Nazis, Charles, a sergeant in the US Army and reporter for the Stars and Stripes, was on the streets of Paris, covering the liberation celebration. He was suddenly grabbed by the most beautiful brunette woman he ever saw, she kissed him on the lips and disappeared into the crowd. Charles followed the crowd to Café Dhingo and met another pretty American woman named Marion Ellswirth (Donna Reed). The mutual attraction was instant, and he was invited to join the party her father was throwing in celebration of the liberation of Paris and the impending end of the war. Charles, Marion, and her persistent French suitor Claude Matine (George Dolenz) arrived at the Ellswirth household, only to find that the woman who kissed Charles was Marion's younger sister Helen (Elizabeth Taylor). During drinks, Charles learned that Marion and Helen's father, James Ellswirth (Walter Pidgeon), fought in the trenches of France during World War I. He survived the war and settled in Paris and was part of the drifter generation (aka: The Lost Generation, 1883-1900). Unlike most drifters, he never grew out of it; even went as far as raising his two daughters to desire such lifestyle. Helen took after her father and used her beauty to sustain a life of luxury even though James was flat broke. Marion went the other way, and looked for serious-minded and conventional young men such as Claude the aspiring prosecutor and Charles the future novelist. Over the next few months, Charles and Helen fell in love and started dating. After Helen recovered from a near-death case of pneumonia from being out in the rain during that winter, they got married and settled in Paris in the spring of 1945 after news that World War II has ended for good. James had hoped that Helen would marry rich, but having taken a liking to Charles, he accepted Charles into the family. Helen eventually got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in 1946, whom they name Vickie. Marion, having lost Charles to Helen, agreed to marry Claude around the same time. Charles struggles to make ends meet with his meager journalist salary while he worked on his novels as well as look after Vickie, while Helen and Grandpa James partied on. Then one day luck struck: James had bought a few large pieces of land in Texas, convinced that he would become an oil baron. The oil never came and the deeds became a family joke. Always ready with practical jokes, he gave those deeds to Charles as Helen's dowry. Five years later in 1951, the joke turned into gold as oil began to shoot up from these lands non-stop, bringing them money beyond Charles and Helen's dreams. With all of their debits paid off, Charles quit his job to focus entirely on his writing career, and Helen and James began to host parties instead of going to them. Over the next year, the relief of financial strain and the influx of wealth suddenly brought out the irresponsible side of Charles, as he could no longer deal with the disappointment of his manuscripts getting rejected by publishers. And unexpectedly, this brought out the responsible side of Helen. Now it was Helen who wished to stay home to raise their daughter Vickie, while Charles partied his wealth away. They also each took on other interests: Helen started to flirt with handsome English tennis player named Paul Lane (Roger Moore). Charles asked professional divorcee Lorraine Quarl (Eva Gabor) to join him as he competed in a local Paris-to-Monte Carlo race. After the race, Charles returned to Paris to patch things up with Helen, only to find her sitting in Café Dhingo with Paul. A fight broke out between Paul and Charles, an angry Charles went home first and bolted the door and then passed out after drinking too much whiskey. Helen ended up having to walk all way to Marion's place in the falling snow and rain. She caught pneumonia again and this time... she didn't make it. Charles hears about her hospitalization the next day and races to the hospital to be at her side when she dies. After Helen's funeral, Marion petitioned for and got full custody of Vickie. Charles went back to his hometown of to Milwaukee to deal with the loss of both his wife and daughter. Two years later in the present day 1954, having straightened out his life and quit drinking for good, Charles returns to Paris (where the movie begins) and finished telling his story to the Café Dhingo bartender. Charles then goes to Marion's house, hoping that his reformation would have softened Marion, and give eight-year-old Vickie (Sandy Descher) back to him. Still feeling resentful towards Charles for having fallen for Helen instead of her, Marion refuses. Seeing that Charles and Vickie belong together, Claude finally stepped in and told Marion off. In the final scene, Marion and Claude bring Vickie to Café Dhingo to look for Charles. And in front of the painting of Helen, the family is finally reunited again. Charles and Vickie then walk off together to go back to America.

An aging actress refuses to admit she is too old to play the ingénue role anymore. Playwright Stanley Krown has a terrific new play. It's got a great part for reigning Broadway star Beatrice Page, and a young actress named Sally Carver will do just about anything to get the ingénue lead. The problem is that Beatrice doesn't want the great role written for her. She wants the ingénue role, something she could have played wonderfully -- when she was twenty years younger. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

A jaded nightclub owner in war-torn Casablanca finds his loyalties are put to the test when his old flame reappears to seek his help in escaping from the Nazis.