The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer

Margaret Turner is a happy and successful woman, with few regrets that she has chosen a legal career in place of marriage and a family. She occupies a respected judgeship; provides a good home for her teenaged sister, Susan; and enjoys the fawning admiration of Tommy Chamberlain, the love-struck Assistant District Attorney. She also has a problem, albeit a rather engaging one, in the form of Richard Nugent artist, playboy and incipient menace to the well-ordered world which Margaret has constructed for herself. Things really get tense, however, when Susan, whose romantic imagination is boundless, conceives a crush on Dick which ranks with the more monumental in the annals of puppy-love. She makes a surreptitious, and uninvited, call at Dick's apartment, the result being a trip to the jailhouse for Mr. Nugent and a widening split between irate older sister and crushed younger one. The therapy, which forms the very funny heart of the play, is provided by Matthew Beemish, uncle of Margaret and Susan, and a rather bemused psychiatrist. Uncle Matt's idea: Make Dick be Susan's beau, until she realizes that her infatuation is ridiculous and he, at the same time, begins to appreciate the need for following at least a few of the hallowed conventions. Margaret offers Dick his choice jail or Susan. He accepts the latter, with reluctance, and off we go on a round of adventures as hilarious as any ever invented.

Sidney Sheldon's remarkable career as a novelist began when he was 50 years old, after he had already been a success in film and television. Perhaps it was his sensibility for screen entertainment that made him so readily able to produce his addictive novels of love and suspense.