This is gonna be short as this isn’t actually a movie about the writer in question, but about the illustrator.
Ginger Rogers plays Jean, a bookstore clerk who believes David Grant, the caricature artist in her neighborhood (Ronald Colman), brings her good luck. She suggests they go in on sweepstakes ticket together as she’s wanting her money to put away at the time of her marriage to school friend Fred (Jack Carson). Grant agrees but only if she allows him to use his part of the winnings for her honeymoon. When the money doesn’t win as much as Jean hoped, David offers to take her on a trip as a “social experiment”. He’s a perfect gentleman until an elderly couple approaches them at the hotel ballroom and mysteriously asks Jean and David to follow them. No, it turns out they are not swingers, they are the authors of Jean’s favorite children’s books who come back to that spot and recreate a cherished memory. Being authors of stories for kids, this cherished memory includes a foot bridge and a wishing well which they ask Jean and David to through pebbles into. There’s some kissing then Freddie shows up, accusing Jean of cheating. All of this comes to a conclusion in a court room after David is suspected of stealing a car he bought in Jean’s name. As it turns out, he is not David Grant, bohemian cartoonists. He’s actually Paul Knight Somerset, the illustrator of a famous folktale book deemed lewd by a judge who threw Somerset in jail. Somerset felt cast down by this because, according to Jean, “artists aren’t like ordinary people, they’re sensitive”, even though the book and its art are later declared a modern classic included on university reading lists. Anyway, Jean and Davi . . . I mean, Paul are set free by the judge to finish falling in love and all that rot.
But I want to see this folklore book, damn it! Also, where was the author he worked with in all of this? Didn’t he have to go to jail too? I need more backstory!
