Plot
When song-writer Alex Burke (Gig Young) enters the lives of the musical Tuttle family, each of the three daughters falls for him. The family lives in the fictional town of Strafford, Connecticut. Alex's personality is a match for Laurie Tuttle (Doris Day), as both she and Alex are seemingly made for each other. Soon they are engaged, but when a friend of Alex's, Barney Sloan (Frank Sinatra), comes to the Tuttle home to help with some musical arrangements, complications arise. His bleak outlook on life couldn't be any more contradictory to that of Alex's, and Laurie falls in love with him. Meanwhile, Laurie's two other sisters, Fran (Dorothy Malone), and Amy (Elizabeth Fraser) each marry, despite still having feelings for Alex. Although the family welcomes Barney into their lives, a feeling of genuine self-worth escapes him, even after both he and Laurie marry. Barney, with a black cloud perpetually hanging over his head, decides one evening to kill himself, feeling Laurie would be better off with Alex, as he was a better provider. Barney drives into oncoming traffic during a snowstorm with his windshield wipers off. Barney lives, and with a new found affirmation of life, finally writes the song he had been working on, finding his self-esteem in the arms of Laurie.
Read more about this topic: Young At Heart (1954 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)