The Guest Cottage

Hope Fairchild is an attractive, intelligent eighteen-year-old girl caught between two dynamic males: Her highly intellectual beau, who wants to marry her at once, even if it means both must quit college—and her wealthy, arbitrary tycoon of a father, who refuses even to sit down and discuss so preposterous an idea with the young couple. Hope is determined not only to work out a sensible compromise on the marriage date question, but also to bring together, in a mutually helpful relationship, her fatherless fiancé and her sonless father. In an attempt to challenge Father’s dictatorship on a small issue, Hope invites a fetching summer theater actress to stay in the Fairchilds’ charming guest cottage (where all the action of the play occurs) without Father’s permission. Since Father—without telling the family—has issued the same invitation to a stately US Senator whose endorsement Father needs for a coveted Federal appointment, the results of this minor rebellion are major—and hilarious.