Natalie Wood plays the eponymous heroine, a young Jewish girl unsure of herself who finds herself drawn to Noel Airman, a drama coach at a summer camp and a dreamer whose aim is to see his musical on Broadway. Unfortunately, the musical is awful and Airman is only after Marjorie for her connections. Torn between her feckless lover, who plans to flee to Europe and asks her to go with him, and her upright fiancee Dr David Harris, it's only at the end that she realises her friend Wally Wronkin is the one and only man for her. Irving Rapper's film, based on Herman Wouk's bestseller, was Wood's big role after The Wild One and made her a star, while Kelly plays against type as the older man after her for all the wrong reasons.